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oct 20 1925 









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Blo acar KREME 


RELIGIOUS 
VALUES 


By / 
EDGAR SHEFFIELD BRIGHTMAN 


Borden Parker Bowne Professor of Philosophy 
in Boston University 


2s 


THE ABINGDON PRESS 
NEW YORK CINCINNATI 


Copyright, 1925, by 
EDGAR SHEFFIELD BRIGHTMAN 


All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, 
including the Scandinavian 


Printed in the United States of America 


DEDICATED 
TO 
MY WIFE 












yeh Aaa 
ae 
oan 








CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 
I. Tue LoaicaL Basis oF Reticious BELIEF 

1. Religion as Isolation or Cooperation........... 15 
Dar Relisious: beletands opie Wiese s vere 19 

3. Coherence as Criterion of Truth and Reasonable- 
TICSS Reed Rene nc yee rine ete PAT Ire eate nae, 2 21 
4. Forms of Unreasonableness................... 23 
Dae HOT or reasonableness aa. ae a ae aeater 26 
6. In What Sense Is Theistic Belief Teaconahiown 28 

II. THe Morat Basis or RELIGIouS VALUES 
Pe OUI Arye Ol, Oa plete aie eke er ke ey ia. ae aes 32 
Det bestroblemroty Unis @haptens. eat eee 32 
Sa Lbenvieaningiol Obligationy 28 Wid ieee oe 34 
PeWoyels, Obligation Binding ii. sea wie oe Dik 
5. The Social Significance of Obligation........... 53 
6. The Significance of Obligation for Religion...... 56 
ion GOUCIUSIONLOL LGC UADLCr eek oer nea n. y. ae 68 
II. TruruH anp VALUE IN RELIGION 

1. Are Values Subject to Logical Investigation?.... 70 

2. Does the Value of Religion Demonstrate Its 
ELEU.L Tee eee er etn Vari Lee ee ame hate ge NciWalen iit 70 

3. How May True Value Be Distinguished From 
ADDArENt yey SUC Lemna les Se aha an ane ts 74 
AMA OITNCUIL Ve INE LOISNV IEW eneas ek anid et, 75 
5. Transition to the Next Chapter............... (ii 

IV. Toe Human VALUES OF RELIGION 

ieeLhe Problem: oigthe Chapter a2 vy.) ae as as lee 78 

2. Definitions of Religion and Value for the Pur- 
poses Olu Lbiss Chantenere mine hls pone 79 


6 CONTENTS 
CHAPTER PAGE 
3. The Human Disvalues of Religion............. 82 
4. Limits of the Human Value of Religion........ 86 
5. How Religion Meets the Ills of Life............ 89 
6. How Religion Fulfills Human Needs........... 97 
7. Transition to the Next Chapter............... 99 
V. Tue More-Tuan-HumMan VALUES OF RELIGION 
lev ThesProblemsor the: Ohapter eae oy eee 102 
2. Positivism and Religious Values............... 104 
3. Metaphysics and Religious Values............. 107 
4. The Objective Reference of Religious Experience. 108 
5. Objective Reference of All Experience.......... 111 
GreObjectivity and) @ertanity ween sete eee 114 
7. How Religious Experience Finds Objectivity.... 116 
8. Positivistic Objections to the Metaphysical In- 
terpretation of Religious Values............ 122 
9. The Conclusion of the Chapter................ 135 
VI. Reticious VALUES AND REcENT PHILOSOPHY 
1 The Problem ot) the Chapter.) - ake 2 ae 137 
2. A Restatement of the General Issue: Positivism 
versis WVletaphysics tea ve eee ee 138 
3. Instrumentalism and Religious Values......... 140 
4. The New Realism and Religious Values........ 152 
5. The New Realism of Spaulding and Alexander... 159 
6. Absolute Idealism and Religious Values........ 161 
7. A Review of the Preceding Interpretations of Re- 
higtous Values of sisain owicaib oe 6 an es Se 165 
8. Personalism and Religious Values............. 167 
9, SUMMA ony nt ie irae eee eo Nee 170 
VII. Tue Exprrrence oF WoRSsHIP 
isthe Problemior the Chapters ten aa ee 173 
2. The Need of Reflection on Worship............ 174 
o, Wiat))Worships1s aN Ot ae ai eeee 176 
4-o Lhe Four Stages of Worshipy. ... serene ee 179 
9) 


. Transition to the Next Chapter.........,..... 184 


CONTENTS rf 


CHAPTER PAGE 
VIII. Dousts ABouT THE VALUE OF WORSHIP 

1 ne Problem of the. Chapters seas tek cde ie 185 
Zep rne Dialectic on Doubt ares mee ital onal oid, 187 

3. First Thesis: Doubt About Contemplation: ‘All 
TSS IGLITI erg vere ret anche nt eat ota Se As Ee day 189 

4. First Antithesis: Doubt About Revelation: ‘‘All 
AFoyd stay(eyale befn) cer metod, ena iets Me ar er ara 190 

5. First Synthesis: Communion: “The Beyond That 
TESS Wi Ghirhs aie oar een cake Ree eaten Baan ate 192 

6. Second Thesis: Doubt About Communion: “All 

Is Feeling” versus Second Antithesis: Doubt 
About Fruition: ‘‘All Is Behavior’.......... 192 

7. Third Thesis of Doubt: ‘“Communion Is Beyond 

Good and Evil” versus Third Antithesis: 
“Fruition Is a Fanatical Assertion of Morality” 196 

8. Final Synthesis: Worship as Conscious Relation 
of the Whole Personality to God........... 199 
Ce SUrVeusOn THe HA DLET Tn) maki. ome en ON, nei 200 

IX. Worsure As CREATIVITY 

Port ne: problem ol the Chapters aeicun wists eae ie 208 
DEPAMG CATING) OTTV OT Seti eter Cen es SaaS Pe a 205 
3. What Worship Creates: Perspective........... 212 
4. What Worship Creates: A Spiritual Ideal... .... 216 
5. What Worship Creates: Power................ 219 
6. What Worship Creates: A Community of Love.. 221 
7. The Preparation of the Soul for Creation....... 223 
Rem ON GL tar TOA VG Wh cr nwa, NaN mt 226 
9. Silent Self-Possession as Creative.............. 228 
1OeeLhe Visionor, Godias Creative face ee us 229 
i UhevGentral Place ofthe Willer vee vi we kde co 234 
PF CONchusion OL tne. napben ar uhiee alee eee chele 236 


X. PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


1 


2. 


The Problem of the Chapter: Topsy and An 
} TH fo0 9) AERA Drips wegen RUN MM) Viv ot (00) hc ce a 238 
The Aim of Religious Education.............. 242 


8 

CHAPTER 
3. 
4. 


5. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 
Objections to Recognizing the Place of Philos- 
ophy in Religious Education............... 244 
Reasons for Recognizing Relations Between Phil- 
osophy and Theory of Religious Education. . 258 
The Fundamental Issue in the Philosophy of 


Rehpious dications cc sete ye a ene 257 
. Specific Contributions of Philosophy to Theory 

orsReligious: Hducation esse. eta nee 257 
. Religious Education and Religious Values...... 276 


PREFACE 


THE aim of this book is, as the title indicates, to 
interpret some of the central values in religious expe- 
rience. Its chief purpose, then, is not to attack or to 
defend any particular philosophers or philosophic sys- 
tems, or any particular religious creeds, but, rather, to 
consider afresh the meaning and value of religion as an 
actual human experience. 

It is impossible, I believe, completely to separate any 
experience from our thought about it. Hence “pure” 
religious experience, purged of all admixture of idea 
and belief, is an abstraction as unreal as is “pure” sen- 
sation in psychology. Some mystics and empiricists 
in religion appear to have forgotten this fact. On the 
other hand, religious beliefs, apart from the life out of 
which they grow and by which they are nourished, are 
abstractions equally unreal. Some contenders for the- 
ory in both philosophical and theological circles seem 
to have forgotten this fact. Neither fact should be over- 
looked. Our actual experience, whether of religion or 
of sense objects, is a life of which thought is a necessary 
and inseparable aspect. Therefore a fruitful study of 
religious value-experience must face the question of the 
truth of the fundamental ideas implied by that expe- 
rience. 

In contemporary philosophy of religion, there is a 
cleavage of opinion between those who find the meaning 
of religious values in their function of adjusting human 
social relations, and those who find the unique value of 
religion in the adjusting of individuals and societies to 


the ideal purposes of a superhuman being, a personal 
9 


10 PREFACE 


God. The former opinion may be called positivism or 
humanism; the latter, metaphysical theism or per- 
sonalism. It is not my view that either one of these 
two opinions is wholly false and the other wholly true 
by itself. Religion has, as positivism believes, a social 
origin and a social destiny; it also has a more-than- 
humanly-social reference. If the positivist forgets God, 
the theist is in danger of forgetting man. Each over- 
simplifies the problem; each is in peril of putting a part 
for the whole. In this book I hope to do justice by the 
humanistic as well as by the metaphysical implications 
of religion. 

The intent of the book may be made clearer by a brief 
preview of its contents. In Chapter I it is shown that, 
if religious values are to be recognized, they must be 
interpreted reasonably ; that is, they must be understood 
in relation to our experience and thinking as a whole. 
Religious values, Chapter II goes on to say, not only 
presuppose reasonable belief but they also presuppose 
loyalty to moral obligation; moral values are the basis 
of religious values. The next chapter (III) points out 
the distinction between apparent and real values; many 
experiences that seem convincing and satisfactory iu 
themselves are seen, when tested by the logical and moral 
criteria of Chapters I and II, not to be real values. The 
constructive interpretation of religious value-experience 
begins with Chapter IV, in which the human values of 
religious experience are discussed, irrespective of the 
truth of religious belief. In the next chapter (V) it is 
shown that many of the most characteristic human 
values of religion, as well as other values, are dependent 
on faith in a more-than-human God. Chapter VI, “the 
watershed of the book,” raises the question how the 
experiences described in Chapters IV and V may best be 
interpreted intellectually. The leading systems of con- 


PREFACE 11 


temporary philosophy are examined with a view to con- 
sidering their relative adequacy as coherent and inclu- 
sive accounts of religious value-experience. The study 
thus far in the book has been a consideration of the 
more general aspects of the problem. The next three 
chapters take up the central experience of religion, 
namely, worship, and undertake to estimate its meaning 
(VII), weighing doubts about its value (VIII), and 
studying the fruits which it creates in human experience 
(IX). Having thus surveyed the meaning of religious 
values, the book closes with some account of the impli- 
cations of such a view of religion for the content of 
religious education. 

Isaac Watts was a devoutly religious poet and a con- 
noisseur in religion. In him, as in most great religious 
natures, there was a union of lofty thought and holy 
experience. He was the author not only of hymns which 
are sung throughout the Christian world but also of a 
Logick. If an apologia for writing on the philosophy 
of religion were needed, Watts would furnish it, for he 
says, “The great design of this noble science (Logic) is 
to rescue our reasoning powers from their unhappy slav- 
ery and darkness. ... It is the cultivation of our Reason 
by which we are better enabled to distinguish Good 
from Hvil as well as Truth from Falsehood; and both 
these are matters of the highest Importance, whether 
we regard this Life or the Life to come.” 


A book like the present one, which discusses the views 
of many thinkers and quotes from their writings, owes 
much to the cooperation of publishers who own the copy- 
rights of the books quoted. The author takes this occa- 
sion of thanking the following named publishers most 
heartily for their courteous permission to quote more or 
less extended passages from the books mentioned. Page 


12 PREFACE 


references are noted in footnotes appended to the quo- 
tations in the text. 


George Allen and Unwin Ltd., London: 
IF’. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality. 
C. C. J. Webb, Divine Personality and Human Life. 
American Sunday-School Union, Philadelphia: 
G. A. Barton, Archwology and the Bible. 
D. Appleton & Company, New York: 
G. 8. Hall, Morale: The Supreme Standard of Life and 
Conduct. 
Bobbs-Merrill Company, Philadelphia: 
A. E. Wiggam, The New Decalogue of Science. 
University of Chicago Press, Chicago: 
G. A. Coe, The Psychology of Religion. 
J. R. Geiger, Some Religious Implications of Pragma- 
tism. 


E. P. Dutton & Company, New York: 
J. Boehme, Signature of All Things. 
R. W. Emerson, The Conduct of Life. 
D. Hume, Treatise of Human Nature. 
(These three volumes are all in Everyman’s Library.) 


Harper & Brothers, New York: 
E. D. Martin, The Mystery of Religion. 


Henry Holt & Company, New York: 

K. 8S. Brightman, An Introduction to Philosophy. 

J. Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy. 

J. Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct. 

W. G. Everett, Moral Values. 

M. C. Otto, Things and Ideals. 

E. G. Spaulding, The New Rationalism. 
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston: 

J. Royce, The Spirit of Modern Philosophy. 

J. G. Saxe, Poems (Diamond EKd.). 
Journal of Philosophy, New York: 

Articles in Vol. 17 (1920) and Vol. 22 (1925). 
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York: 

Willa Cather, One of Ours. 

J. ©. Squire, Poems, First Series. 


PREFACE 13 


John Lane, The Bodley Head Limited, London, owners of 
English copyright: 
J. B. Tabb, Poems. 
Longmans, Green & Co., New York: 
W. James, The Varieties of Religious Experience. 
R. B. Perry, Present Philosophical Tendencies. 
R. B. Perry, Present Conflict of Ideals. 
B. Russell, Mysticism and Logic. 
Macmillan & Co., London: 
S. Alexander, Space, Time and Deity. 
B. Bosanquet, Some Suggestions in Ethics. 
B. Bosanquet, What Religion Is. 
H. Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics. 
The Macmillan Company, New York: 
M. W. Calkins, The Good Man and the Good. 
J. B. Pratt, The Religious Consciousness. 
R. W. Sellars, The Next Step in Religion. 
S. S. Singh, Reality and Religion. 
R. A. Tsanoff, The Problem of Immortality. 
University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill: 
R. Pound, Law and Morals. 
Open Court Publishing Company: 
J. Dewey, Experience and Nature. 
Oxford University Press, London: 
N. Macnicol, Indian Theism. 
Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York: 
W. McDougall, Outline of Psychology. 
G. F. Moore, History of Religions. 
University Press, Cambridge, England: 
W. R. Sorley, Moral Values and the Idea of God. 
Yale University Press, New Haven: 
W. E. Hocking, The Meaning of God in Human Expe- 
rience. 


The chapters of this book have undergone numerous 
revisions. In their present form none of them have been 
published before. Earlier articles are, however, the 
substantial basis of several of the chapters, and thanks 
for permission to republish articles in revised form are 


14 PREFACE 


due to the faculty of Rochester Theological Seminary 
(for Chapter II, previously published in the Bulletin of 
the Seminary), to The Methodist Review (Chapter ITI), 
to The Journal of Religion (Chapter IV), and to Dean 
Walter Scott Athearn (for use of materials in Chapters 
VI and X, originally published in two issues of The 
Bulletin of Boston University). 

The first form of Chapters IV, V, and VI was given 
as a series of lectures before the Providence Biblical 
Institute, meeting at Brown University. Chapters VII, 
VIII, and IX were delivered as Lowell Institute Lec- 
tures at King’s Chapel, Boston. I thank Professor 
Henry T. Fowler of Brown University and Professor 
William H. Lawrence, Curator of the Lowell Institute, 
for their cordial consent to the use of the material men- 
tioned. 

EpGAR SHEFFIELD BRIGHTMAN. 

Newton Center, Massachusetts, June 12, 1925. 


CHAPTER I 
THE LOGICAL BASIS OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF 


1. RELIGION AS ISOLATION OR COOPERATION 


WHEN we consider the religious values, we are think- 
ing about a genuine aspect of human experience. There 
is no doubt about the existence of religion nor about the 
fact that men usually find value in their religious expe- 
riences. But there is much doubt about the interpre- 
tation of those experiences. It is, then, the task of every 
generation and of every individual to confront afresh 
the experience of religious values and to seek for a 
reinterpretation of their nature and their relations to 
the rest of experience. It is the aim of this book to 
suggest some ideas that may contribute to such rein- 
terpretation. 

In order to be clear from the outset we should have 
in mind a working definition of the two concepts which 
are central to our problem, namely, values and religion. 

A value, in the simplest sense of the word, is what- 
ever is liked, desired, or approved. But many “values” 
lead to conflict with other “values” and with the laws of 
logic; hence they are value-claims only, not true values, 
for they cannot be permanently approved in the long 
run. A true value, as distinguished from a simple value- 
claim, would be what is liked, desired, or approved in 
the light of our whole experience and our highest ideals, 
such as the logical ideal, the moral ideal, the xsthetic 
and religious ideals, and the total ideal of personality. 
Observation shows that only conscious persons can 


experience value or be valued intrinsically for their own 
15 


16 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


sakes. Things, abstractions, and even ideals have only 
instrumental value; that is, they are means to the end 
of intrinsic value-experience.* 

Religion is more difficult to define than is value. It 
will serve our present purpose to regard it as including 
the experiences of man’s total personal and social life 
in approaching what he believes to be the Supreme Real- 
ity and the Supreme Value in the universe—Supreme, 
at least, so far as the destiny of the individual or the 
group is concerned; and also those experiences which are 
believed to originate with the Supreme Being or beings 
and which affect the destiny of man as an experiencer 
of value. Any such definition of religion sounds both 
complicated and hollow. Itis, however, unavoidable that 
an inclusive definition shall be very broad. It must be 
a blanket capable of stretching over primitive cults, 
polytheism, pantheism, positivism, all the great world- 
religions, and the religious moods of individuals. As 
the discussion progresses, our concept will become more 
precise. 

Religious values, in some sense, have been a constant 
factor in human experience, but in modern times religion 
has had to fight for its life. This is a relatively recent 
event in its history. 

Primitive man took religion for granted without reflec- 
tion. His daily acts, his social relations, were insep- 
arably bound up with his relations to unseen beings 
which determined his destiny. It did not occur to him 
to question the truth or value of his religious beliefs 
and practices. As religion developed, men became more 
clearly aware of the existence of different types of 





*Chapter III of this book and E. S. Brightman, An Introduction 
to Philosophy (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1925), pp. 
136-165, contain further discussion of the nature of true value. 

*See other definitions in HE. S. Brightman, op. cit., pp. 317-322. 


LOGICAL BASIS 17 


religion among different tribes and nations. Then, too, 
within the great religions, as in Egypt, in Persia, in 
India, China, and Israel, there arose reformers who pro- 
claimed a higher type of conduct and of worship and who 
exhorted the stiff-necked and the perverse. 

But there was no serious attempt at a radical eriti- 
cism of religion itself, its essential beliefs and values, 
until the rise of Greek philosophy. This criticism, much 
to the distress of Nietzsche, Mr. Dewey, and others, 
resulted in an affirmation of the soundness of the fun- 
damental religious faith in God, immortality, and the 
objectivity of values. 

Greek philosophy came to an end in 529 a. D., when 
Justinian closed the Neoplatonic school of philosophy 
in Athens. There ensued the Middle Ages, a long 
period (529-1453 a. p.) in which far more substantial 
intellectual work was being done than is commonly 
recognized, but a period nevertheless in which religious 
thought was largely confined to the elaboration of theo- 
logical premises given by revelation and tradition rather 
than venturing an independent examination of the foun- 
dations of religious faith. 

It would be a gross error, however, to regard the 
Middle Ages as homogeneous. The seeds of scientific 
investigation and critical thought were being planted in 
many minds. The Renaissance and the Reformation did 
not find the world wholly unprepared for the new per- 
spectives and new problems which they brought to the 
mind. The seeds of free, critical thought, long germinat- 
ing, now grew and bore abundant fruit. Much of it was 
wild; but out of the luxuriant productivity of the period 
since the fall of Constantinople in 1453, there have been 
matured the ripe fruits of the great scientific discoveries 
and philosophical systems. 

Meanwhile religion has been profoundly affected by 


18 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


the changes in the intellectual atmosphere. In such 
circumstances as prevail in the modern world, religion, 
like nations, must choose between two courses of action, 
namely, isolation and cooperation. That is to say, either 
religion is to regard itself as a unique power, self-deter- 
mining and self-sufficient, or it is to acknowledge its 
membership in the total spiritual life of the race and 
thus impose on itself the duty of intellectual comity with 
science, philosophy, and art. 

Whichever alternative religion chooses, it has to fight 
for its life. If it choose isolation, it must defend that 
position against internal dissension and _ external 
assaults. The Roman Catholic Church has shown 
incomparably greater skill in holding the position of 
isolation than have most Protestants who have chosen 
the same sort of strategy; but the story of Tyrrell and 
Loisy and other Modernists who have arisen within the 
Roman communion shows that even the skill of Rome 
fails to persuade many of her own most spiritual leaders, 
and that her fight to maintain religion in isolation from 
modern thought and extra-religious values rests in the 
end on coercion rather than on the use of spiritual » 
weapons. 

If, on the other hand, religion choose the second 
alternative, that of cooperation with the whole spiritual 
and intellectual life of humanity, it imposes on itself 
a far more difficult task than that of splendid isolation. 
It enters into the arena of life, rests its appeal not on 
tradition or authority but on human experience and 
intelligence, and on its harmony with the best achieve- 
ments of scientific and philosophical thinking—the best 
achievements, be it noted! It becomes a member of the 
League of Values, with all of the privileges and respon- 
sibilities of such membership. 

If religion is to survive, it cannot be by accepting 


LOGICAL BASIS 19 


any and every philosophical system. To pursue that 
course would be to confess that religion was intellec- 
tually neutral. This would mean a return to the posi- 
tion of isolation and a reducing of religion to the level 
of mere emotion or mere conduct without ideas or 
ideals. Such an outcome is both intellectually and 
religiously intolerable. Religion should come to an> 
understanding with the intellectual life of the times in 
which it lives.* It should become clearly aware of its 
relations to contemporary scientific and philosophic 
thinking. It should understand which philosophies 
interpret and which philosophies reject the values about 
which religion is concerned. Above all, it must show 
that the beliefs on which it rests may reasonably be held 
as true not merely in their own isolated right, but also 
when set into relation with the other work of the intel- 
lect, as well as with the total experience of life itself. 
The attitude of extreme isolation refutes itself. It 
is in principle broken down by the advance of thought. 
It still maintains its hold on institutions and individ- 
uals; but if there be true values in religion, those values 
cannot be conserved by the policy of the isolationist who 
hid his talent in the earth, but, rather, by that of the 
cooperators who went and traded. Religion, if it be 
true, will thrive in commerce with the other values of 
experience. If it have profound faith in itself, it will 
not shrink from that commerce, but will welcome it. 


2. RELIGIOUS BELIEF AND LOGIC 


The origin and history of religion show conclusively 
that religious values are not originally produced by 
logical reflection. They are the outgrowth of hereditary 





*See A. C. Knudson, Present Tendencies in Religious Thought 
(New York: The Abingdon Press, 1924) for an excellent discussion 
of many such problems. 


20 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


tendencies, social situations, and other environmental 
factors, in all of which religious faith sees the hand of 
a God who dwells in and acts through that which we 
call nature and natural laws. Life, then, produces 
religion before critical thought begins. In this respect, 
however, our experience of religious values differs little 
from any other experience. Whether in sense percep- 
tion, or in the growth of secial institutions, or in artistic 
creation, forces other than critical intelligence are at 
work. No amount of reasoning could ever think a color 
or a sound into being if the reasoner had not experienced 
any sensations. Our customs and traditions are the 
outcome of instinctive, inventive, and imitative activity, 
not of well-calculated theories or deliberate social con- 
tracts. Poetry is not the conclusion of a syllogism. 
In all our experience, then, as well as in religion, there 
is a great deal that is not the product of reason. This 
is the valid meaning of Lotze’s maxim that life is more 
than logic, and, too, of the Kantian doctrine that form 
without content is empty and content without form is 
blind. Reason always works with material that it does 
not create by mere reasoning. 

There is, however, great danger of overemphasizing 
the nonrational or (as it is often ambiguously called) 
the irrational element in life. Reason does not create 
all of life, but it is the sacred duty of reason to interpret 
all of life. No irrational item has a right to declare 
its independence of reason. If reason were to agree that 
there was a realm about which it ought not to think, 
that agreement would be the self-surrender of the very 
nature of reason. Let the experiences of life be as non- 
rational in their origin as you please, it is always the 
task of reason to survey these experiences as a whole 
and to determine their relative meaning and value. The 
assertion of this duty is not merely in the interest of 


LOGICAL BASIS 21 


reason, but also in the interest of religion. It is religion 
that commands us to test the spirits and to interpret 
the unknown tongue. If the emphasis on life over 
against logic were to be carried to the extreme of mean- 
ing a life that is independent of logic, then life would 
become utter confusion. Reason certainly needs faith 
if it is to reach beyond immediate experience; but just 
as certainly faith needs reason, if it is not to abandon 
all claim to truth and value. 

it follows, then, both from the situation in which 
modern thought finds itself and also from the very 
nature of all experience, that the values of religion need 
to be interpreted by logical thought. They cannot safely 
be taken as they come in every experience that claims 
religious value. If they are to be so interpreted, sound 
method demands that we begin with the most funda- 
mental problem. We are to try to understand religious 
values, to give some reasonable and logical account of 
them. The first task of one who appeals to reason and 
logic is to show, if he can, what is meant by calling 
anything reasonable or logical. 


3. COHERENCE AS CRITERION OF TRUTH AND 
REASONABLENESS* 


On the surface it is evident that the reasonableness of 
any belief means its conformity to reason; but what is 
reason? Broadly speaking, it is the body of most gen- 
eral principles used by the mind in organizing experience 
and arriving at judgments accepted as true. 

Hence if a man believes in God because of some divine 
revelation, we always ask him what his reason is for 
accepting this-revelation rather than that, Mormonism 
rather than Christian Science, Hinduism than Moham- 





“See H. S. Brightman, An Introduction to Philosophy, Chap. II, 
for a critical survey of various proposed criteria of truth. 


22 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


medanism. Revelation is not the most general body 
of principles used by the mind. Revelation must be 
tested by reasonableness, not reasonableness by revela- 
tion. Revelation is a reason not ultimate but derived; 
it is not a criterion of truth but presupposes a criterion 
by which it is judged. 

The plain man will find the next higher court of 
appeal in what may be called pragmatic considerations. 
He will say that he accepts his Christianity because of 
its results in his practical life, or in the history of the 
race, or in the success of missions. This pragmatic 
method is followed by the sciences in hypothesis and 
experiment; and it appears to have the sanction of the 
Jesus of the Gospels from the earliest recorded sayings 
of Jesus to John. But, after all, it is a servant of 
reason; it is not master of the house. That which is to 
be the arbiter of all our thinking must have at least a 
clear meaning. What, we must inquire, does pragma- 
tism mean by practical life? No one who has read 
Rickert’s Die Philosophie des Lebens can continue to 
feel comfortable in basing his beliefs on a practical life 
that is so very living and protean that it may mean 
everything or nothing. If we mean biological life, does 
not biology presuppose the logic of scientific method? 
If we mean ideal life, is it not, then, our task to define 
the ideals which lead us to accept a belief as true? 
Professor Moore has complained of “Some Lingering 
Misconceptions of Instrumentalism,” and assures us 
that instrumentalism “appeals to a transfigured and 
glorified biology, loaded with all the conscious and social 
values which are denied to it by those who find it such a 
bugbear.”® But it is clearly the business of logic to 
specialize in the “transfiguration and glory.” If we 





Jour. Phil., 17 (1920), pp. 514-519, esp., p. 516. 


LOGICAL BASIS 23 


should press minds of various types to define the mean- 
ing of the proposition, “This is life,” we should doubt- 
less receive many interesting answers; but if we under- 
took to test religious belief by its fruitfulness for life 
as defined, we should have chaos, not reasonableness. 

Not raw, immediate life as it comes, but life inter- 
preted, organized, seen in the light of a transfigured 
glory, that is, a logical ideal, is our ground of belief. 
The task of the mind is the organization and interpre- 
tation of experience; the elimination of contradictions, 
the establishing of relations—in short, coherence—is 
our ideal. It is the Supreme Court of Reason, to which 
biology, cash values, and all particulars and fruits must 
appeal. In Kant’s words, “Human reason is by nature 
architectonic; that is, it considers all knowledge as 
belonging to a possible system, and hence admits only 
such principles as at least do not prevent the particular 
knowledge under discussion from standing in some sort 
of system with other knowledge.’® There is a place 
for pragmatic factors within the realm of coherence; 
but to find a place for coherence under the legislation 
of any other principle is impossible. 

Any belief, then, is true if or insofar as it organizes, 
interprets, and explains experiences more consistently, 
systematically, and economically than any competing 
belief. 


4. ForRMS oF UNREASONABLENESS 


All may not be willing to accept the criterion of 
coherence; but no one, least of all a pragmatist, could 
object to trying it, to see how it works. 

If religious values should turn out to be incoherent, 
they would be untrue, and (at the present stage of our 
thought) would merit no further consideration. We 





*Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 2d ed., p. 502. 


24 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


therefore begin by asking what is meant by unreason- 
ableness. 

a. Incoherence.—It has often been said that religious 
belief is incoherent; that is, inconsistent with itself or 
with the facts. 

The worst form of incoherence is self-contradiction. 
Is the idea of God self-contradictory? Kant called it 
“ein blosses, aber doch fehlerfreies Ideal,” “a mere ideal, 
yet an ideal free from flaw.”’ It is hard to believe that 
Kant (out of fashion though he be) could have called a 
round square an ideal free from flaw! Attempts made to 
show that an absolute person is a self-contradiction 
strike us as logomachy which vanishes with a clear 
definition of terms. An a priori denial of religious 
belief is as risky as an affirmation of a priori knowledge. 

Incoherence may take the form of inconsistency with 
the facts of experience. The chief facts that seem to 
contradict belief in God are those to which we give the 
name of evil. It is true that these facts contradict cer- 
tain concepts of God; they contradict a God for whom 
pleasure is an absolute good and pain an absolute evil; 
or a God who multiplies the cattle of the righteous and 
blasts the crops of the unrighteous; or a God whose 
purpose is completely revealed to every prayerful 
believer. But, with all their difficulty, they do not con- 
tradict a God whose purpose is the moral education of 
free beings in immortal life. 

b. Noncoherence.—While belief in the God of religion 
may not be sheer nonsense, and may not flatly contra- 
dict the facts, it may lack the capacity to unify and 
interpret experience; that is, it may be noncoherent, like 
the belief in a spiritual chimera in the n™ dimension. 
This belief is not self-contradictory; it contradicts no 





"Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 2d ed., p. 669. 


‘ | LOGICAL BASIS 25 


item of experience; yet every sane mind rejects it. Why? 
Because, as we say, there is no “reason” for it; that is, 
it connects with nothing in our real world of experience ; 
there is no evidence for it. Many honest minds regard 
belief in God as of this sort. But it is surely ill-consid- 
ered to Say that there is no evidence for theistic belief ; 
the whole of experience is the evidence, and belief in 
God is in some measure, at least, an interpretation of 
the evidence. Perhaps it is not adequately coherent with 
the facts; it is certainly not utterly unrelated to them. 

Religious belief has, however, a property that greatly 
offends the dominant positivism of the day. This posi- 
tivism holds that only those beliefs are reasonable that 
are verifiable; that is, that lead directly to the objects in 
experience to which they refer. But the God of religious 
worship is transcendent; he can never, for all his imma- 
nence, be an object in immediate experience (although 
he may well be an object of immediate experience, which 
is quite another matter). This makes him (sO we are 
told by positivists of pragmatic or realistic type) an 
unverifiable, unintelligible thing-in-himself, a metaphys- 
ical monster outside the universe of discourse that can 
rationally be meant by experiencing persons, and so, 
thoroughly noncoherent with our experience. 

Powerful as this positivism is, it may be doubted 
whether it will receive a favorable decision in the 
Supreme Court of Reason. The opinion of the Court 
will, at any rate, have to reckon with the following 
facts: The transcendent God of theism is not a Ding 
an sich; for his being is through and through of the 
nature of conscious experience: he is a Person. T’urther, 
true though it may be that we live in a world of social 
objects and of common experience, no theory can deny 
the fact that every person experiences himself as himself, 
however “social” the content of his experience may be. 


26 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


Again, every proposition about society, or past expe 
rience, or universals, is a metaphysical proposition, 
which, equally with theistic belief, is incapable of posi- 
tivistic-pragmatic verification; that is, it cannot lead 
directly to the objects in experience to which it refers. 
If God is a metaphysical monster, so is the Common 
Will. In present or future experience no such object 
will ever be met as all men, or their will, or God. Must 
we, then, reject the whole brood and breed of these 
monsters, or should we revise our concept of verification 
in the light of the way in which our mind actually builds 
its world? The pragmatic conception of verification 
appears to be arbitrarily narrow; it is only one special 
instance of the agreement of hypothesis and fact. Any 
hypothesis is valid which renders our experience more 
intelligible, whether the object to which it refers ever has 
been or ever can be an immediate experience of mine or 
not. It is not too much to say that current positivism 
is a dogmatic limitation of the function of reason. Its 
attempt to show theistic belief to be noncoherent is 
essentially a refusal to think the problems through to 
the end. 


5. FORMS OF REASONABLENESS 


All reasonableness is coherence; but it is important 
to remember that there are kinds and degrees of reason- 
ableness. Rationality assumes different forms accord- 
ing to the type of structure that may be found in the 
subject matter dealt with. The kind of evidence or 
verifiability that it is reasonable to look for is therefore 
determined by the type of structure with which reason 
is dealing. 

a. Logical and mathematical.—Within logie and 
mathematics we have illustrations of perfect coherence ; 
the axioms and postulates imply the entire system of 


LOGICAL BASIS 27 


the science. Here is, indeed, coherence; but here is no 
knowledge of concrete and particular reality. 

b. Empirical—The causal sciences are a coherent 
explanation of the experienced data of sense. Coherence 
here is more than formal consistency; it is the finding 
of meaning and structure in content, and the devising 
and testing of hypotheses regarding the laws of this 
content. 

ce. Belief in other persons.—The present chaos in the- 
ories of consciousness makes one hesitate to say anything 
about persons; but, like Massachusetts, there they stand 
(or, as the functionalist, following the familiar figure, 
might prefer to say, like Kansas, there they go) ; and we 
must make something out of them. The conscious life of 
other persons is a different type of structure from the 
subject matter of logic or of the empirical sciences. 
Behaviorism is at our heels, and we must express our- 
selves: the simple truth is that a psychology of other 
persons is a metaphysical science. Social communica- 
tion is a metaphysical fact. Originally social though 
my consciousness may be, the assertion that there are 
others in the same boat is metaphysical and open only 
to analogical proof. Yet the fact that there are other 
persons is most substantial knowledge, and is valid 
because it is the only coherent interpretation of the 
evidence. 

d. Interpretation of experience as a whole.—W hen 
we undertake to give a coherent account of the mean- 
ing of experience as a whole, we are launched on what 
is the most unavoidable and the most precarious task 
of reason. Much confusion arises from demanding in 
our synoptic interpretation of reality the same type of 
coherence as is appropriate to some one of the sub- 
ordinate types already mentioned, such as formal 
logic. 


28 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


The remainder of the chapter will be devoted to con- 
sidering in what sense theistic belief may be said to be 
a reasonable interpretation of experience as a whole. 


6. IN WHAT SEensE IS THEISTIC BELIEF REASONABLE? 


In this discussion, for the sake of definiteness, we are 
assuming a proposition which will be examined from 
numerous angles in later chapters, the proposition, 
namely, that the object of religious experience and the 
source of religious value is a real personal God, who is 
immanent in the world, but who also transcends it. 
Such a theistic God is more than a venture of hope for 
the future of humanity (Perry), and more than the com- 
mon will (Overstreet). He is the ground of all existence 
and value. He is an ontologically real Person for him- 
self. The problem of the logical basis of religion is, 
therefore, essentially concerned with the reasonableness 
of theistic belief. 

In a discussion of this kind it is our duty to avoid 
unreasonable and extravagant pretensions either in 
behalf of or in opposition to the reasonableness of the- 
ism. Extravagant pretensions are regrettably charac- 
teristic of much theistic apologetic and of much anti- 
theistic polemic. 

To suppose, for example, that in a matter concerning 
the interpretation of experience as a whole we have 
attained or can attain ideal reasonableness or complete 
coherence is either mere pretense or self-delusion. Kant 
was not infallible, but he should have taught us some- 
thing. 

It would be an extravagant pretension of reason for 
it to demand that theistic belief, in order to be regarded 
as rational, should be expected to attain the ideal of 
complete coherence, when our other reasonable beliefs 
about the real world do not attain it, and still are 


LOGICAL BASIS 29 


regarded as rational. There is a certain theophobia 
which causes minds to stagger at the belief in God, | 
although they accept other beliefs which are logically as 
incompletely coherent as theism. Men will believe in 
teleology—but not in God; in human freedom—but not 
in God; in theism, so long as theism is taken to mean 
the possibility of progress, or the victorious struggle of 
good with evil, or the impersonal objectivity of values— 
but not in God; in a suprapersonal Absolute, no matter 
how meaningless the concept suprapersonal may be—so 
long as we do not believe in God! This theophobia 
arises from many sources: from fallacious theistic argu- 
ments, from resentment against dogmatism and eccle- 
Siasticism, from the feeling that our deepest and most 
sacred beliefs merit the most critical examination, and 
from real difficulties in the concept of God. None the 
less, it is not good intellectual sportsmanship; it is, to 
be precise, not coherent, to accept one relatively but 
incompletely reasonable belief on the ground that it is 
the best that we can get and to reject another such 
belief on the ground that it is not completely proved. 
Much less is it good sportsmanship or good thinking to 
deny a relatively coherent and intelligible belief in 
order to substitute for it a less coherent and intelli- 
gible one. Is not Professor Perry’s melioristic faith in 
progress in a universe from which moral and spiritual 
ontology is banished less reasonable, and more naively 
confiding, than faith in progress in a universe in which 
there is a God, and purpose, and freedom? Again, is not 
the suprapersonal a less rational concept than the per- 
sonal, and is there any reason for belief in the supra- 
personal which is not a better reason for belief in a 
personal God? 

It is, further, an extravagant pretension of reason for 
it to suppose that it can organize and interpret its world 


30 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


without making assumptions and hypotheses about what 
lies beyond the here and now. The extreme empiricist 
holds that the mind really operates by trial and error, 
like a mouse in a maze; but the geological ages are not 
long enough to account for the construction of science, 
of ideals, and of philosophy, by “blind, empirical grop- 
ing” (Kant). The extreme rationalist holds that sylo- 
gistic reasoning from intuitively necessary premises will 
yield us all we know or need to know. The emptiness 
of such a conception of the work of reason is pretty 
generally conceded to-day. 

If a coherent world doesn’t gradually happen to us 
by good luck, and if it wasn’t forced on us by formal 
logic, how do we come by it (or by such an approxima- 
tion to it as we possess)? To this question the answer 
may be put in many different ways. It may be said 
that there is a nisus toward totality, or that the spirit 
of the whole is operative in us, or that we cannot under- 
stand ourselves without framing an ideal vision or 
synopsis of a meaningful world, or that our faith in the 
rationality of the universe impels us to make assump- 
tions and form hypotheses which we test by their ability 
coherently to articulate experience. That is to say, the 
only account of the mind’s work that is true to the facts 
involves the recognition that reason cannot progress 
without making assumptions about a universe. 

What then, does all this mean for the reasonableness 
of religious belief? The following propositions will 
summarize our position: 

a. Theistic belief, being a belief about the meaning of 
the whole concrete universe, is not completely reason- 
able; a completely coherent account of all experience is 
not likely to be attained by finite beings. | 

b. Theistic belief is not incoherent; it is incompletely 
coherent. 


LOGICAL BASIS 31 


ec. If incomplete coherence does not veto belief in other 
fields, it need not in this field. 

d. It is unreasonable to expect formal proof of theistic 
belief. 

e. If theistic belief is relatively the most coherent 
interpretation of experience available, it is reasonable 
to accept it, unreasonable to reject it. 

f. The reasonableness of theistic belief is to be tested, 
not by its absolute adequacy to solve every problem, but 
by its relative adequacy as compared with other world- 
views. Carneades was right in holding that probability 
is the guide of life; absolute rational certainty is not 
accessible to man. But it remains true that there is a 
vast difference between random guesswork and the prob- 
ability of coherent thought. Only the most rational 
probability is intellectually respectable. 


CHAPTER II 
THE MORAL BASIS OF RELIGIOUS VALUES 


1. SUMMARY OF CHAPTER I 


In the previous chapter we discussed the logical basis 
of religious belief. It was shown that if religion is to 
assert the truth of its fundamental beliefs, it is called 
on to interpret their relation to the beliefs arrived at 
through other channels than religious experience and 
formulated by science and philosophy. This is true, we 
showed, whether religious values be regarded as inde- 
pendent of the other achievements of civilization or as 
interrelated with them. It was shown, further, that, 
while actual religion is historically developed prior to 
any critical reflection upon it, nevertheless it is the duty 
of logical thought to interpret the meaning and truth of 
every religious belief. The remainder of the chapter 
was devoted to a defense and explanation of coherence as 
the essential nature of reason, and so as the test of the 
logical value of religious beliefs. 


2. THE PROBLEM OF THIS CHAPTER 


If our thinking thus far has been sound, religious 
beliefs are subject to the Jurisdiction of reason. They 
are not, it is true, to be deduced as a conclusion from 
nonreligious premises, but they are members of the same 
mind that entertains nonreligious beliefs. Reason must 
see to it that all the beliefs held by one mind dwell 
together in peace and harmony. 

This logical foundation is necessary, but (it must be 


confessed) it is pretty formal, in the logical sense of 
32 


MORAL BASIS 33 


the word. It notifies us that religion (whatever it may 
be) must not believe anything which violates other neces- 
sary beliefs, and, further, that its beliefs must have a 
coherent connection with the rest of our life; but it 
does not tell us what there is in religion that is dis- 
tinctive or that makes it worth believing. That is to 
say, it does not define or interpret the nature of religious 
value. 

In the present chapter we aim to draw somewhat 
nearer to the interpretation of religious values, which 
is the central problem of this book, by the study of a 
type of experience closely related to the religious, 
namely, the moral. We shall leave to one side the ques- 
tion of origins, taking for granted the fact that our 
religious and our moral values have both gone through 
a long evolution, and admitting that it is very difficult 
to say just when either religion or morality began, or 
which emerged first. In the study of chemistry we 
should not be greatly concerned about the science of 
the early Polynesians; nor in determining our present 
duty should we be guided or disturbed by the moral 
thinking of those worthy savages. The present signifi- 
cance of religious and moral values is no more to be 
learned from a study of their remote origins than is the 
present significance of geology to be learned from a 
study of the opinions of the first pithecanthropus who 
noticed a difference between pudding stone and flint. 
Religion and morality are both, it is true, living proc- 
esses of individual and social experience, and should 
be interpreted in their true historical perspective; but 
mere “origin does not determine meaning and value.” 
Our aim, then, will be to inquire into the meaning of 
moral values in the best form in which we know them, 





ifor a definition of the term ‘value,’ see Chap I, § 1, p. 15. 


o4 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


with special reference to their relation to religious 
values. 

That it is reasonable to assume a close relation 
between the two types of value is evidenced by the his- 
tory of religion. About many of the greatest figures in 
the past of religion, such as Confucius and Buddha, it 
is hard to decide whether their teachings should prop- 
erly be called religious at all, so predominantly moral 
was their content. Every important religion has had 
some sort of moral code and has taught something about 
the ideal aim of the good life. It is the opinion of many 
competent observers that the moral laxity of modern 
times is related to the lessening of religious devotion. 
It is also to be observed that the fiber of religion either 
becomes flabby or is abnormally and harmfully excited 
when religion forgets its moral basis. Antinomian 
fanaticism is obviously evil, but liberal sentimentalism 
is no better. When a distinguished clergyman is reported 
as saying, “The thought of duty should be banished 
from our lives; not ‘I must’ but ‘I love to’ should 
be the expression of blessed service,” he shows an equal 
obtuseness to the love of duty and to the duty of love. 
The problem, then, concerns both theory and practice. 
Our task is to inquire into the nature of the relation 
which is implied by these facts. 

In order to succeed in this task it will be necessary to 
examine the nature of morality. A moral man is one 
who does what he ought to do; a moral society is one 
that honors its obligations. Our study, therefore, will 
concern itself chiefly with the meaning of obligation and 
its relation to religious values. 


3. THE MEANING OF OBLIGATION 


Socrates taught that knowledge is virtue; Bacon, that 
knowledge is power. This generation has more knowl- 


MORAL BASIS 3D 


edge and more power than any generation since history 
began, but it would be optimistic to say that it also 
had more virtue. More than knowledge and the power 
that knowledge brings is necessary to virtue. This more 
is expressed in the saying of Jesus, “By their fruits ye 
Shall know them.” Indeed, there is some knowledge that 
follows, not precedes, virtuous living; “if any man 
willeth to do. . ., he shall know.” Hence, although 
this generation has more knowledge than any that went 
before, it is greatly in need of knowledge, namely, the 
kind of knowledge that grows out of the experience of 
virtue. Information about the facts of nature and 
human nature will always be essential to good living, 
but understanding and application of the principles of 
obligation are more essential than any knowledge of 
matters of fact. What-is is a brute mystery unless it 
be related to some ideal of the ought-to-be. 

Obligation, the subject of our present study, is a time- 
less subject that is always timely, and never more timely 
than in an age that seems to be careless of many obliga- 
tions. Whether one looks at the world of business, or 
sport, or government, or religion there appears to be a 
relaxation of the stern “Puritanic” sense of obligation. 
The relaxation has different causes and takes different 
forms, but it is almost equally true of the much-dis- 
cussed younger generation and its parents. The ten- 
dency of the age appears to be indorsed by current psy- 
chology, which seems able to find a complex or a gland 
that is quite sufficient to account for any delinquency 
of young or old. 

The approach to an interpretation of morality and 
religion through the conception of obligation is not the 
usual one at present, but it is one that seemed funda- 
mental to Kant, and it has commended itself to recent 
thinkers like Josiah Royce and Mary W. Calkins in 


36 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


America, and W. R. Sorley and J. E. Turner in Eng- 
land.? It is not the only approach, but we shall try it 
for what it is worth. 

That there is some relation of obligation to religion 
as well as to morality has been, as we have seen, an 
almost universal belief; but there has been difference 
about the precise nature of that relation. For the 
present we can only say that there may be some doubt 
whether all obligation implies religion, but that there 
can be no doubt that all true religion implies obligation. 

Some word conveying the sense of duty, oughtness, or 
obligation seems to be found in most developed lan- 
guages, and the experience that is described by the 
expression “I ought” is one that most normal human 
beings have had. A few profess not to have had the 
experience. These are mostly either the “glad hearts” 
of Wordsworth’s Ode, “who do thy work and know it 
not,’ or sophisticated moral philosophers (as Miss 
Calkins has pointed out). Whatever the number of 
those who have never experienced obligation, it is sound 
method to ignore them in any study of normal moral 
experience; the duty-blind and the color-blind are alike 
incompletely endowed. They must be dealt with by 
people who are capable of understanding obligation ; but 
they themselves are objects rather than subjects of moral 
legislation. 

When, therefore, we ask what obligation is, we are 
asking about a universal experience of man. Our start- 
ingpoint is not any theory or tradition or authority, but 
it is a fact that is observable by everyone in his own per- 





4J. Royce, The Philosophy of Loyalty (New York: The Macmillan 
Company, 1908). M. W. Calkins, The Good Man and the Good (New 
York: The Macmillan Company, 1918). W. R. Sorley, Moral Values 
and the Idea of God. Second edition (Cambridge University Press, 
1921). J. EH. Turner, The Philosophic Basis of Moral Obligation 
(London: Macmillan & Co., 1924). 


MORAL BASIS ot 


son. When I experience an obligation I confront a 
unique fact in consciousness; an obligation is not a sen- 
sation or an image or a desire; it is simply the acknowl- 
edgment that I ought to do this or that. It may 
have intimate relations, as we shall see, to social stand- 
ards or to our desires (expressed or suppressed) ; but 
a standard that is an obligation is different from a 
standard that is merely socially approved, and a desire 
that is an obligation is different from a desire that is 
merely intense and enduring. When I say, “I ought” I 
am referring to an experience as genuinely unique as is 
the experience of color or of sound. 

In saying that obligation is unique we have not com- 
pletely described it. It has the peculiar property of 
being a fact that claims to be more than a fact; that 1s, 
it claims to be lawgiving for experience as a whole. 
He who acknowledges an obligation and means it seri- 
ously would be talking nonsense if he did not intend 
to imply that he believed the principle of his duty to 
be equally and always binding on himself and all persons 
under similar circumstances. Kant’s categorical imper- 
ative is no antiquarian theory; it is what all moral 
experience means. The person who experiences any 
obligation may then be said to be legislating; be is laying 
down a universal ideal or law, of which he may be but 
dimly aware, but which is the real meaning of his obliga- 
tion. 

It is the tendency of current ethical thinking to ignore 
or minimize or explain away this experience of obliga- 
tion. The subordination of the principle of duty to the 
principle of value is very general. But the tendency in 
question goes much further. Moralists seem to be more 
anxious to show Kant’s shortcomings than to grasp the 
truth in his theory; more zealous to discover the psy- 
chological, social, or evolutionary antecedents of obli- 


38 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


gation than to interpret its meaning. The soundest 
current textbook on ethics? fails to do justice by Kant 
or by the ought-experience. Yet into this book, as into 
every objective account of moral experience, there enters 
a recognition of universal obligation. “We hold,” says 
Everett, “that there is at least one intuitive, or immedi- 
ate and axiomatic, judgment concerning it (that is, 
value) which may be expressed as follows: ‘The good is 
worthy to be chosen.’”’* It is interesting to note that 
this formula means that all persons ought to choose the 
good, but that the word “ought” is omitted. 

We have said that obligation is a universal experience, 
unique and lawgiving, but the ethical theorists seem 
to desire to explain this experience away rather than to 
take it as seriously as it takes itself. Is obligation truly 
ultimate or is it to be explained in terms of something 
else? This question must be answered before our defini- 
tion of obligation will amount to much. 

There is a general assault in the intellectual world 
against everything that pretends to ultimateness or 
finality. The Absolute is unpopular. Social institu- 
tions are in the melting pot. The mind is in the making. 
Space and time and atoms are less privileged than of 
yore. Psychology, as the saying goes, has lost its soul, 
its mind, and even consciousness itself. Scripture is no 
longer infallible. It would be astonishing if moral obli- 
gation alone should escape challenge and analysis. 

The assault on all absolutes is not due to mere anarchy 
in the spiritual life. It is only an overemphasis on the 
first half of the apostolic injunction, ‘Prove all things, 
hold fast that which is good.” Modern thought is fully 
justified in bringing every belief to the bar of reason. 





*W. G. Everett, Moral Values (New York: Henry Holt and Com- 
pany, 1918). 
“Op. cit., p. 259. 


MORAL BASIS 39 


It is, however, true that the net result of the attack on 
foundation principles is both theoretically and practi- 
cally pernicious unless it be followed by a constructive, 
synoptic view of what remains after the battle is over. 
The battle of thought is never literally ended; but there 
is more to life than the quarrels of the intellectuals, 
and it is high time to raise the question about the point 
that we have reached in thinking about moral obliga- 
tion. After evolution and Freud, relativity and higher 
criticism, pragmatism and realism, the War and the 
Peace, is obligation still binding, or have all obligations 
fallen prey to the Spirit of the Times? 

In order to answer this question we must consider the 
chief current conceptions of obligation that are opposed 
to the one presented in this chapter. These views all 
agree that obligation is not ultimate; that it neither 
falls from heaven nor is a part of original human nature, 
but that it is really a form of something other than 
obligation. 

a. Custom as the Source of Obligation.—Every prob- 
lem is being approached to-day from the social point 
of view. The nature of obligation seems to lend itself 
to social explanation. Man is conscious of the demands 
of family and clan long before he is conscious of having 
a moral obligation toward himself as an individual; and 
when self-regarding duty is recognized, the standard 
type of individual to which one feels oneself bound to 
conform is a type approved by some social group. 
Hence there are many who regard the moral life as no 
more than a systematization of group-customs. The 
moral problem for such thinkers becomes a struggle 
between the desires of the individual and the mores of 
the group. 

There is much that speaks for the truth of this view. 
Desire of social approval and fear of social disapproval 


40 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


are among the most powerful motives in the life of men, 
whether savage or civilized. The tabu is respected every- 
where among primitive men. The “things that are not 
done” are wrong. A Hebrew writer could put into the 
mouth of Abimelech the words, “Thou hast done things 
unto me that are not done” (Gen. 20. 9), or could 
say of the outrage on Dinah that “such things are not 
done;” while the revisers agree with the King James 
translators in rendering in both passages by the words, 
“ought not to be done.” Likewise, for the most modern 
man or woman of refinement, the thought that “this 
thing is never done” is a sufficient veto on many an 
aGieas | 

Nevertheless, the identification of duty with what is 
socially approved is not rationally justified. When 
Greek thinkers began to inquire about the difference 
between what was true by convention (¢tce) and what 
was true by nature (véuw), they were on the track of 
the fallacy which underlies the idea that obligation 
is wholly due to custom. Some things are right merely 
because society agrees on a certain procedure in order 
to avoid inconvenience or rudeness; such are the code 
of etiquette, the rules of any game, and many of the 
laws of the land. Such also is the choice of Sunday as 
a day of rest, rather than Tuesday or Friday. But 
some things are true by nature, and any custom which 
ignores nature is a bad custom and ought to be changed. 
As our knowledge of nature increases, old standards 
and customs should be and often are revised; customs 
regarding the care of the body, the treatment and pre- 
vention of disease, the drinking of alcoholic beverages, 
the place of woman in society have changed radically 
with the increase of knowledge. 

It is true that custom is the origin of some particular 
obligations; it is untrue that custom is the source of 


MORAL BASIS A 


the validity of any obligation. An intelligent under- 
standing of obligation, derived in part, as we have seen, 
from knowledge of natural law, has led and will lead 
to a sharp criticism of custom, to a disregard of social 
approval or disapproval. Prophets and_ scientists, 
philosophers and saints agree that custom is not the 
fundamental sanction of obligation. 

The sociologist may argue that our consideration of. 
this point has overlooked one important fact, namely, — 
that the first dawn of moral obligation always occurs in 
a social situation. He may rightly say that this is true 
not only of the race but also of the individual. He 
would then argue that all further development of the 
sense of obligation, no matter what form it may take, 
goes back to this social root and is an outgrowth of it. 
There is no doubt, we may reply, that we first learn 
of obligation from others; but this does not prove that 
obligation is merely social. Doubtless also our knowl- 
edge of a physical world, of mathematics, and of logic 
has a social origin; but to hold that all our knowledge 
iS mere convention and custom because it has a social 
origin is to abandon ourselves to utter moral skepticism. 
Yet this is what those must do who derive the binding 
force of obligation from custom, if they are rigorously 
logical. 

We may conclude that custom is probably the source 
of our first experiences of obligation, but that it is 
not the source of the meaning and validity of any 
obligation. 

b. Law as the Source of Obligation.—Law is only codi- 
fied custom enacted and enforced by constituted author- 
ities; and it would require no special discussion were it 
not both for the differences of opinion among eminent 
jurists and for the practical importance of the subject. 
Anyone who is interested in an expert treatment of the 


42 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


problem should read Law and Morals’ by Dean Roscoe 
Pound of the Harvard University Law School, a learned 
and compact little book. 

Law, we have said, is only codified custom; but the 
legislator must select the customs that he is to codify, 
and must sometimes institute new customs. He must 
repeal or revise existing law. An analogous duty belongs 
to the judge in the application of law; very often he 
must use his discretion. In the light of facts like these, 
Dean Pound has studied the history of juristic thought. 
He points out that there are three main theories, the 
analytic, the historical, and the philosophical. ‘To 
the analytic jurist,’ he says, “law was law by enact- 
ment, .. . to the historical jurist it was law by con- 
vention, and... to the philosophical jurist it was law 
by nature.’® Since the facts of legislation and judicial 
interpretation cannot be explained wholly in terms of 
prior enactment or custom, the philosophical jurist is 
right. The authority of law must rest back on “nature.” 
Law itself cannot be the source of all obligation. Good 
men recognize an obligation to obey law, but they often 
are conscious of an obligation to change law, and some- 
times to resist it. The right of rebellion cannot be 
denied without arbitrary ignoring of history, but it can- 
not be affirmed without admitting that legislation derives 
its authority from moral law, not moral law from 
legislation. Our view gives to law a deeper and more 
sacred sanction than any merely empirical account. 

c. Destre as the Source of Obligation.—The theories 
that regard custom or law as the root of obligation 
may be called sociological; from these we may turn to 
the psychological theories. 

The most common psychological theory seeks to inter- 





‘University of North Carolina Press, 1924, 
*Op. cit., p. 117, 


MORAL BASIS 43 


pret obligation as a form of desire.’ Man’s nature is 
an arena of conflicting desires. Some are relatively 
transitory, some deeper and more permanent. Morality, 
many believe, consists in the discovery of the desires that 
are or can be permanent, and the guiding of life so that 
the dominant desire will rule all other desires. The 
consciousness of obligation is, then, simply the form 
assumed by the dominant desire. “I ought”? means only 
“T desire as my chief good.” This point of view has been 
held by most thinkers in the history of ethics except 
the intuitionists and the Kantians. 

Nevertheless, it is not true to moral experience. The 
warfare of obligation and desire, which all admit, is not 
correctly described by calling it a warfare between 
dominant desire and conflicting desires. No desire, how- 
ever long-lived or dominant, constitutes an obligation 
merely because of its existence as a desire. Often we 
acknowledge obligations without any desire to fulfill 
them; often we have no desire to discover the obligations 
that we know we should find if we looked. 

There is some ground for the assertion of a relation 
between obligation and desire. Obligation is, in large 
part, a principle for organizing and judging desires; 
and conformity to obligation ought to be a dominant 
desire. Yet it remains true that no desire, because it is 
a desire, and for no other reason, is therefore obligatory. 
The law of “I want,’ even when calculated with the 
utmost prudence, is not the law of “I ought.” 

d. Obligation as Behavior-Pattern.—The popularity 
of behavioristic psychology has led to some recent 
attempts to apply behaviorism to ethical problems, as 
by Holt (The Freudian Wish in Ethics) and Givler 
(The Ethics of Hercules). In view of the fact that 


7Bertrand Russell’s What I Believe (New York: E. P. Dutton & 
Company, 1925), is a vigorous defense of this view, 





44 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


ethies and Christian teaching both emphasize conduct, 
it has seemed not utterly fantastical to interpret moral- 
ity in terms of behavior. However, a little reflection 
will show that no behavior-pattern could ever express 
the meaning of the experience of obligation. Any behay- 
ior you please may spring from an inner life of evil 
motive; the fruits by which we are to be known can be 
understood only in relation to the roots from which they 
erow. The tap-root of morality is the sense of obliga- 
tion, and it can be found only in the inner life of con- 
sciousness. Any conception of morality or of educa- 
tion (secular or religious) that lays exclusive stress on 
conduct, on external expression, is untrue to the psycho- 
logical facts of moral and religious experience. Out of 
the heart are the issues of life; and in the heart, that is, 
in conscious awareness, is the seat of obligation. <A 
behavioristic theory must say that obligation is simply 
the act of pronouncing the word “obligation” plus the 
chain-reflexes aroused by that word. It is not going too 
far to say that extreme behaviorism explains obliga- 
tion by denying that there is any such experience. 

e. Obligation as Rationalization—Our survey of 
opposing views would be incomplete if it omitted the 
attitude of the psychoanalyst. No study of obligation 
from the psychoanalytic camp has come to my attention, 
but probably one has been written, or, if not, will be. It 
runs, or will run, about as follows: The ‘‘moral” man, 
so called, is suffering from an inferiority complex, or, 
at any rate, he finds his desires frustrated. In this 
unhappy state his subconscious finds him, and flies to 
his relief, whispering to him words about the dignity 
of being true to obligation, which soothe his wounded 
self-feeling and restore his self-confidence. I*or such a 
view the consciousness of obligation is a compensation 
or defense-mechanism which may be said to “sublimate” 


MORAL BASIS 45 


man’s frustrated desires. An idea with such an origin 
is called a rationalization. 

There is truth enough in the psychoanalytic account 
to make it seem plausible. It is true that there are many 
cases of defense-mechanisms to be found both within 
and without the walls of hospitals for the insane. It 
is also true that loyalty to obligation sublimates—makes 
sublime—the frustration of man’s desires and restores 
his self-respect. But this account, after all, does not tell 
us very much about obligation beyond the fact that it 
performs a certain psychological function. There is 
nothing in psychology which tells us that a “rationaliza- 
tion” is always irrational. Oblgation may perform 
just the function that the psychoanalyst claims for it and 
still be just the unique and significant experience that 
our theory asserts it to be. Psychoanalysis may tell us| 
something about some of the functions of obligation; 
it does not tell us anything about its validity. 

f. Obligation as Unique Complex.—The theories pre- 
viously discussed all agree in trying to explain obligation 
in terms of something else, and thus in denying its 
uniqueness. Miss Calkins recognizes the uniqueness of 
obligation, but nevertheless holds that it may be ana- 
lyzed into something else. It is, she thinks, “an espe- 
cially unique and distinctive complex of experiences 
usually disjoined.”*® These experiences are, first, a feel- 
ing of compulsion and, secondly, a feeling of freedom 
and activity. In being conscious of duty or obligation, 
then, I am conscious of being commanded and com- 
mander at once. This analysis is very interesting, and 
all will doubtless recognize self-compulsion and free 
activity as elements that are present in moral experience. 
Nevertheless, question may be raised about the com- 





*The Good Man and the Good, p. 15. 


46 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


pleteness of the analysis. If obligation is made up of 
compulsion plus activity, it is, to borrow the language 
of chemistry, not a mechanical mixture of the two but 
a compound. Just as water has properties that oxygen 
and hydrogen lack, so obligation has a property that 
compulsion and freedom lack. There may be compul- 
sion and freedom without obligation. The soul of the 
woman who follows the styles may be conscious of a 
unique complex of compulsion and freedom without any 
touch of moral obligation; the sense of being well 
dressed (so the saying goes) gives a peace that religion 
(and morality) can neither give nor take away. After 
all, the essence of obligation evaporates in Miss Calkins’ 
analysis as truly as it does in the views which we have 
previously examined and rejected. “I ought freely to 
compel myself,’ means something different from “I do 
freely compel myself.” The former states my experience 
of obligation; the latter is what I feel when I carry out 
the obligation. The “ought” remains a unique attitude 
that cannot be analyzed away. I may be aware of an 
obligation without any desire to fulfill it, with no sense 
of compulsion, contemplating it as coolly as one con- 
templates a triangle, and ignoring it as completely in 
my conduct. 

g. A Restatement of the Meaning of Obligation.— 
After all this criticism of opposing views, it is desirable 
to make a somewhat more positive statement of our 
constructive view. There would be little point in attack- 
ing other views only to leave in their place a wretched, 
isolated feeling, “I ought,” with no more meaning than 
the bare words. “I ought,” taken by itself, is hardly 
more than the shadow of the skeleton of the moral life. 
Yet even this is not to be despised; the shadow implies 
the skeleton, and the skeleton implies that there is, or 
at least has been, a living organism. ‘To change the 


MORAL BASIS AT 


metaphor, our X-ray examination has revealed the faint 
outlines of a bony framework; what have these outlines, 
these “ought’’-experiences, to do with our living obliga- 
tions? Let us look at the moral organism more care- 
fully. 

(1) “Ought.”—First of all, there is, as we have 
found, the unique element of the experience of “ought” 
or,, duty.” It is like nothing else. It is uniquely, 
or as Kant says, categorically imperative.? Moral life 
cannot stop with mere contemplation of the uniqueness 
of duty; but it cannot exclude its rigorous commands. 
Jeremy Bentham was incensed at those who made the 
feeling of duty a substitute for thought about particular 
duties; and in his Deontology he excoriated “ought” as 
“the talisman of arrogance, indolence and ignorance, 
. . .an authoritative imposture.” Bentham was right 
if emphasis on “ought” be no more than a dumb assertion 
of obligation. We must refute him by considering the 
further implications of this experience. 

(2) Moral Law.—The ought-experience is not a mere 
feeling; it is also, as we have seen, a piece of legislation. 
When I say, “I ought,” I always imply something more 
than the presence of a feeling in my consciousness, even 
than the feeling, “I am coerced and yet I am active.” 
“T ought” means “I approve the principle by which I 
am now acting as the principle by which all rational 
beings everywhere ought always to act when placed 
under circumstances similar to mine.” It was Kant’s 
erasp of the universal element in duty that made him 
so certain that morality cannot be based on any moral 

*That the uniqueness of “ought” is no peculiar doctrine of Kant’s 
alone is evidenced by the emphatic way in which Sidgwick, the 
hedonist, says that “the fundamental notion represented by the word 
‘ought’ (is) ... essentially different from all notions representing 


facts of psychical or physical existence.” Methods of Ethics, sev- 
enth edition (London: Macmillan & Co., 1922), p. 25. 


48 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


feeling. His antithesis of feeling and law was doubt- 
less grounded on faulty psychology, but his certainty of 
law in the moral life expressed a fundamental and essen- 
tial truth. Morality is not merely compulsion and con- 
trol; it is compulsion and control in the light of a prin- 
ciple acknowledged to be universally binding. 

(3) Ldeal of Personality.—It is generally agreed that 
Kant’s doctrine is an incomplete account of what obli- 
gation implies. His view of the moral law should be 
supplemented by T. H. Green’s doctrine of the ideal of 
personality if we are to understand obligation. “I ought” 
is a verb that implies an object and the universal law is 
not that object. It would be absurd to say merely that 
I ought to realize a universal law; for the law in my 
experience always takes the form of particular ends to 
realize, particular goods to choose. I ought, then, to 
attain what is truly valuable. This aspect of obligation 
is not sufficiently explained when I have drawn up a 
list of the values of life, like Professor Everett’s table 
of values—the economic, bodily, recreational, associa- 
tional character, esthetic, intellectual, religious.?° These 
values, which we all acknowledge, are to be realized not 
loosely and separately but in a personal and social life 
which is an organic whole. Our ought-experience 
imposes on us the obligation, or, rather, expresses the 
fact that we impose on ourselves the obligation, of fram- 
ing for ourselves as individuals and for the society in 
which we live the best ideal of personal living that our 
minds can frame. Obligation means the duty of form- 
ing and of realizing, as far as in us lies, this ideal. This 
fact, given in the very structure of moral experience, is 
one reason for the fundamental importance of the 
expression of the religious and moral ideal in the per- 
sonality of Jesus Christ. 

Op, cit, p, 182: 


MORAL BASIS 49 


Our conception of the ideal will grow; it will be 
nourished by every influence that enters our experience. 
The imperative command of duty is satisfied if our ideal 
is as good as we can make it, and our realization of 
it as perfect as our powers permit. 

It is this ideal that gives content to obligation; but 
obligation is not merely knowledge or recognition of the 
ideal. We cannot get rid of the uniquely imperative 
basis of ethics. Neither the “goods ethics” nor the “duty 
ethics,” as Bowne" calls the two points of view, can be 
explained in terms of the other; Bentham and Kant 
sought in vain to do away, the one with duty, and the 
other with value as a unique essential of ethical theory. 
Kach point of view is necessary; neither alone is suf- 
ficient. Either without the other is empty or blind. 

A further remark on the ideal of personality should 
be added. The meaning of obligation is the imperative 
command to make the ideal real. We sometimes speak 
of ideal values, but a value that is merely ideal is really 
no value at all. The ideal of personality, in so far as it 
is merely a program of action that is not acted on, even 
in intent, is quite valueless. A value is a type of per- 
sonal life, a form of actual experience that satisfies 
through its conformity to some ideal. Among many 
practical men the word “idealism” is a by-word and a 
hissing, because it is taken to mean mere contempla- 
tion of ideals without regard to their realization. A 
significant ideal is imperative; when we think it we 
must add, “I ought to realize this ideal.” It is the fact 
of obligation that mediates between our ideal of per- 
sonality and our life of real value, and commands us to 
judge the real by the ideal, to make the ideal real. Any 
tendency to slur over our experience of the imperative 





uThe Principles of Ethics (New York: American Book Company, 
1892). 


50 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


tends also to make our ideals empty dreams, cut off from 
life, or realized only as whim and fancy strike us. 

(4) Possibility of Attaining the Ideal.—There is a 
further implication of our experience of obligation. 
Since it implies a law binding on all rational beings, it 
obviously cannot command the impossible, for this would 
destroy the rational nature of moral law. Hence, as 
Kant teaches, ought implies can; the moral law presup- 
poses freedom; obligation extends only to the limit of 
our ability in the situation in which we find ourselves. 
It is therefore not our obligation to attain the full ideal 
at once; but only to attain as much of it as we can and 
such aspects of it as are relevant to the situation. It 
is, however, evidently commanded by the moral law 
that we should keep the whole ideal before our minds 
when a choice is being made, because otherwise a fair 
judgment of the bearing of the ideal on the situation is 
impossible. 

(5) Knowledge of the Situation.—The foregoing dis- 
cussion has shown that the small word “ought” has a 
rich content. “I ought” means (1) a unique imperative, 
(2) that formulates a universally binding law, (3) 
directed toward the realization of the highest type of 
personality, (4) and yet commanding only the possible. 
It is evident that (4) is meaningless unless we add (5), 
that obligation commands us to act in full light of the 
best possible knowledge of the situation in which we 
are and its consequences. 

Emphasis on the moral situation is one of the import- 
ant contributions of pragmatism to current thought. 
It is interesting to observe that a nonpragmatic analysis 
like the present one necessitates the same emphasis. If 
we aim only to understand what obligation means, we 
are driven to take the total situation into account just 
as inevitably as though we started with a pragmatic bias. 


MORAL BASIS dL 


But our approach has an advantage over the pragmatic; 
the latter usually involves an overemphasis on the bio- 
logical aspects and on immediate results, while the 
former takes the whole range of the meaning of moral 
experience into account and does not seek to reduce 
obligation to survival-value or meaning to action. 


4. Wuy IS OBLIGATION BINDING? 


With our view of the meaning of obligation, we have 
the materials for an answer to the most searching ques- 
tion that may be raised by the moral skeptic, namely, 
Why is obligation binding? Why should this word 
“ought” rule our lives, when it conflicts with so many 
of our desires? 

On our view obligation is binding because it is self- 
imposed, or, as Kant would say, autonomous. Obliga- 
tion does not arise from the mere command of a foreign 
power like society or even God himself; we are bound 
to do what we recognize that we ought to do; and the 
obligation is binding, inescapable, because we have 
imposed it on ourselves. We cannot evade the jurisdic- 
tion of laws that we ourselves have made. 

To some this will seem like a surrender of the founda- 
tions of morality rather than a strengthening of them. 
Society perhaps, these may say, does not create obliga- 
tion; but how can it be said that God is not the source 
of obligation? Is he not the source of all being, of all 
value? What law can be binding save in dependence on 
his will? 

The implied answers to the foregoing rhetorical ques- 
tions are all, I believe, true. Nevertheless, although 
God is to be regarded as the source of the moral order, 
when he chose such an order he chose a world of self- 
respecting persons, whose moral life should develop 
from within, and who must themselves choose their own 


52 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


careers and obligations within the limits of possibility. 
Much is imposed on us by God; but it is the gift of 
God that we should impose our obligations on our- 
selves, and meet him as free person meets free person, 
face to face. There is at stake here the fundamental 
issue between Catholic and Protestant morality; the for- 
'mer denies and the latter affirms the principle of auton- 
/omy. Not in vain has Kant been called the philosopher 
of Protestantism.'? 

Further, obligation is also binding because it is 
rational. To acknowledge obligation is to be conscious 
of a rational law. Reason is the synoptic vision of the 
mind; it is the power to be self-consistent and inclusive, 
to take everything into account and to see everything 
as a whole. “Ought” is always a command to be 
rational, in this sense. He who violates obligation vio- 
lates reason; he is not only a bad man, he is also an 
unreasonable man. Tor, to violate obligation is to do 
what we judge we ought not to do. The bad man thus 
either contradicts himself, or, at best, leaves something 
out of account that reason bids him to consider. The 
man who is reasonable must, if he has moral experience 
at all, be true to obligation. 

Finally, obligation is binding because loyalty to obli- 
gation is essential to human welfare. True human wel- 
fare means the realization of the individual-social ideal 
of humanity. Heredity, habit, social convention and 
other forces conspire to keep the average mass of the 
race somewhere near the point of tolerable living. But 
if experience and reason may be trusted, it is clear that 
no external forces acting on man, and no psychological 
mechanisms of which we know can be trusted to work 





uSee M. de Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life (London: Mac- 
millan & Co., 1921), p. 67, for a statement of a Roman Catholic stand- 
point. 


MORAL BASIS a) 


uniformly for human welfare. Only the man who sees 
the human problem in the light of obligation will keep 
steadily loyal to the cause of individual and social wel- 
fare. Wordsworth’s “happy spirit” is far too much a 
creature of habit to be trusted to see the ideal needs of 
man in the complex situations of modern life, and to act 
faithfully in conformity with that ideal. After all that 
can be done by suggestion and habit-training and gland 
treatments and psychoanalysis has been done, there will 
always remain the fact that man’s personality is a unity; 
and that it must govern itself as a unity by intelligent 
loyalty to reasonable obligation. Moral education, 
therefore, needs to lay more stress on personality and 
moral reason, and perhaps less stress on the externals 
of conduct. : 


5. THE SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF OBLIGATION 


Any theory of obligation which roots in the individual 
and advocates moral autonomy must face squarely the 
social problem. Only the individual person can say, “I 
ought.” No one can say to him, “Thou oughtest,” save 
in the mild sense of stating for him the result of his own 
moral legislation. Socially speaking, such a doctrine as 
this seems not merely individualistic; it seems anarchi- 
cal. If society is a collection of self-legislating indi- 
viduals, how can a genuine community arise? How is 
real moral cooperation possible? 

This is no purely academic question. Everyone 
knows that there is a real clash between conscience and 
the demands of society, both in time of war and in time 
of peace. Further, there is a deeper clash between the 
permanent welfare of the individual and of society. If 
society is to prosper, the individual must sacrifice him- 
self or be sacrificed. 

It is, however, hasty to conclude that because obliga- 


54 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


tion is imposed by individuals on themselves it is there- 
fore anarchical or antisocial. On the contrary, the expe- 
rience of obligation has great social importance. 

The experience of obligation usually occurs in a com- 
plex to which we give the name of conscience. It is 
important to distinguish between the emotional and 
the rational conscience. As we ordinarily meet the feel- 
ing of obligation in ourselves, it has the form of a rather 
intense emotional experience; but this emotional con- 
science is not the binding obligation of which we have 
been speaking. Conscience becomes binding only when 
we stop to think what it means, grasp something of the 
principles involved, and impose its laws on our choices. 
Now, it is evident that the emotional conscience may be 
very arbitrary; and there is grave danger that it would 
be antisocial. But the rational conscience, by its very 
nature, iS social. 

Reason is, to some extent, shared by all normal human 
beings. Every intelligent mathematical operation is an 
instance of a process that is at once individual and 
autonomous and also social in its meaning and outcome. 
In principle, such is also the moral reason. When it has 
its perfect work, it arrives at results that are true for 
all and good for all. Moreover, the moral reason teaches 
us to respect other persons, and treat them, as Kant 
teaches, never as means only, but also as ends. What 
principle is more significant socially than that of respect 
for personality? More specifically, obligation com- 
mands us to attain the maximum value, the closest ap- 
proximation to the ideal of personality in every situa- 
tion; and this value, this ideal, if reasonable, must take 
society into account and must assume a social form. 
The human moral legislator-for-himself, the social legis- 
lator, and the divine legislator start each from his own 
point of view; but they meet in the objective values that 


MORAL BASIS ay) 


each sees to be worthy of realization. Value is a social 
principle; for while it may be chosen by an isolated indi- 
vidual, the great values of life can be realized in their 
fullest and richest forms only by a cooperating com- 
munity. He who is fully loyal to obligation is driven 
to social loyalties. 

If all these considerations fail to convince, and the 
critic of obligation as a basic principle still regards “I 
ought” as too individualistic a basis for a social ethic, 
one other consideration may still be urged. There is 
only one ultimate alternative to a society of autonomous 
moral persons, namely, a society of persons who recog- 
nize no obligation but are ruled by force. It is thus 
that Hobbes conceived morality. But over against the 
view of human nature that Hobbes and Machiavelli hold 
—a pessimistic denial of the power and social outcome 
of individual obligation—there are Kant’s view and 
Hegel’s view, that see within the human individual a_ 
reason at work that is social in its meaning and can | 
be, must be, trusted to work out right social | 
consequences. On moral pessimism a moral society 
cannot be built. 

This does not imply that all use of force is immoral. 
On the contrary, it means that society is under obliga- 
tion to provide conditions which make the existence and 
development of moral persons possible. Hence non- 
moral and immoral individuals must be restrained and 
often the moral man whose judgment differs from that 
of society must be compelled to cooperate against his 
will. Loyalty to obligation will thus lead to an unstable 
equilibrium between society as a whole and its con- 
stituent individuals until a perfectly moralized society 
of perfectly moralized individuals has been attained. 
Loyalty to obligation may cause much suffering and 
many tragedies on the way; but it 1s necessary to per- 


D6 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


manent and truly worthful social progress. Only the 
loyal lead humanity toward the goal of perfection. 


6. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF OBLIGATION FOR RELIGION 


We are now ready to confront the problem to which 
our whole discussion has been leading, namely, the 
problem of the relation of moral to religious values. 
Religion seems to move in a different realm from mere 
morality and to breathe a higher and purer air.'* 

Religion seems to be no mere human goodness; it 1s 
a power of more-than-human origin. “Religion,” as 
Fichte says, “consists in the fact that in his own per- 
son and not in that of another, and with his own spir- 
itual eye and not with that of another, man sees, has, 
and possesses God immediately.‘* Yet, on the other 
hand, morality, like logic, also asserts its prerogative 
to legislate for religion. 

At first sight that legislation might seem to be pro- 
hibition, or declaration of war. Just as obligation seems 
to conflict with the demands of society so also it seems 
to conflict with the demands of God. Conscience seems 
to be individual, not social; human, not divine. To make 
one’s own moral judgment the supreme arbiter appears 
to be rebellion against Cesar and God alike. In addi- 
tion to these problems, common to the social and the 
religious approach, religion raises difficulties of its own. 
If God be supreme, he must be the source and giver of 
the moral law; then, human moral autonomy becomes 








See the very informing articles by A. C. Knudson on “The Sig: 
nificance of Religious Values for Religious Knowledge,” in Meth- 
odist Review, 106 (1923), pp. 341-352, and on “Religious Apriorism” 
in EH. C. Wilm, Studies in Philosophy and Theology (New York: The 
Abingdon Press, 1922), pp. 98-127; also an article by the same writer 
on “Henry Clay Sheldon—Theologian,’ Methodist Review, 108 
(1925), pp. 175-192. 

4 Anweisung zum seligen Leben, in Werke, Vol. V, p. 418. 


MORAL BASIS ot 


meaningless. Further, critics of religion are often ask- 
ing in these days how it is possible to reconcile the 
moral consciousness, and its demand for improvement, 
with the existence of a perfect God, who would obvi- 
ously have made the world already as good as omni- 
potence could make it, and hence hardly capable of 
improvement by us impotent mortals. Religion, they 
think, means paralysis of morality. 

Let us approach the problems with the hypothesis 
that, in spite of appearances, the moral experience and 
the religious experience are both fundamentally trust- 
worthy; and, in the spirit of sympathy with each, seek 
for some solution to the apparent contradictions. If | 
our hypothesis is that both obligation and religion are 
lawgiving in human life, then our first question should 
be about the relation of the two. Either morality is 
dependent on religion, or religion on morality, or each 
is (in some sense) independent of the other. 

In any philosophical inquiry it is wise to begin with 
experience. There is no doubt that both morality and 
religion are facts of human experience. If we cling 
closely to the facts of experience, and subtract the addi- 
tions made by faith and belief and reasoning, we shall be 
forced to admit that moral obligation is a more imme- 
diate experience than is the existence of God. I say 
“more immediate,” for I do not believe that any expe- 
rience is purely immediate and free from all interpreta- 
tion; but most men will agree with the statement that 
less of either faith or reason is involved in acknowledg- 
ing an obligation than in believing in God. We may go 
further, and say that our experience of values in gen-— 
eral and of moral value in particular is an undeniable 
fact, whatever our further theories may be. Whether 
we believe in God or not, there is value and there is 
obligation. Whether God issues moral commandments 


58 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


or not, obligation is self-recognized and self-imposed. 
The principle of moral autonomy means that the bind- 
ing law of obligation and the implied command to 
realize values do not depend logically or psychologically 
on belief in religion, and therefore that the whole realm 
of religious experience rests on the basis of loyalty to 
moral obligation, and cannot declare its independence 
of morality. 

Friends of religion are often loath to recognize this 
fact. It seems to them a surrender of the supremacy 
of the value that they prize, and a rebellion against the 
sovereignty of God. Yet the facts of life speak strongly 
against this attitude. No faith or theology has permis- 
sion to deny experience; and experience testifies that 
many men, great and small, who have been unable to 
accept the belief in God have nevertheless been loyal to 
obligation, and have devotedly added what they could 
to the sum of human happiness. Nor should the friend 
of religion regard this fact with aversion. On the con- 
trary, it is one of the most significant proofs of the 
supremacy of value and of the existence of God if the 
universe is such that the recognition of imperative 
values is somehow native to the soul of every human 
being, whether his mind accepts or rejects the God of 
all values. Bertrand Russell’s famous essay, “A Free 
Man’s Worship,”'® is a good example to show what I 
mean. Russell rejects God; he sees no hope, no future 
for the race; “‘slow doom falls pitiless and dark.” Never- 
theless, in man there are ideals, noble thoughts; and it 
is man’s business to cherish these, “proudly defiant of 
the irresistible forces that tolerate, for a moment, his 
knowledge and his condemnation.” Russell’s facts are 
more important than his theory. His facts are a world 





*In Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic (London: Longmans, 
Green & Co., 1921), pp. 46-57, 


MORAL BASIS 59 


in which moral persons bravely strive on, even when 
appearances are most unfriendly, a loyalty to obligation 
that will not be frustrated while it can breathe. His 
theory is of a purposeless, godless universe. Do not 
his facts cry aloud for a God? If the universe is as he | 
understands it to be, the existence of meaning and value 
in human experience is a sheer miracle. 

When God seems far away, and there is dense dark- 
ness about us, there is a pathway back to God that no 
human soul can lose so long as it remains human; wis- 
dom and philosophy may be lost, faith in God and even 
faith in our fellow man may be lost, but no one will 
deny that in his innermost being there is a law that 
tells him, “I ought to be better than I am,” or that in 
his daily life there are some experiences of beauty and 
goodness, of truth and wonder. Obligation and value 
are always there; and a world in which the law 
of obligation is universal and inevitable is a world 
in which there is strong likelihood of there being a 
God. 

From the religious point of view there is a further 
reason enforcing the truth that the validity of obliga- 
tion is logically prior to that of religion. Any religion 
that has developed very far holds to the belief that God 
is good. Judaism, Mohammedanism, Christianity, Zoro- 
astrianism, modern Buddhist sects, and others agree 
that God is good and that he expects goodness from man. 
This means that we must acknowledge goodness before 
we can acknowledge a good God. Belief in a supreme 
personal creator is not belief in God, unless that creator 
recognizes moral obligation. Experience of the mys- 
terium tremendum, the awful mystery, of which Otto 
has been telling is not religious in the ideal sense unless 
the mystery is good as well as awful. Otherwise, how 
could we distinguish a religious experience from expe- 


60 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


rience of the monstrum horrenduwm informe ingens of 
our school days? 

The Supreme Being, then, is God, not by virtue of his 
being a creator, nor by virtue of his power to inspire 
awe, but by virtue of his loyalty to obligation and his 
realization of values. Only a creator who is also a 
redeemer is a God truly worthy of the name; only a 
mystery who respects the-moral law can be worshiped 
rather than dreaded. We are driven to the conclusion 
that recognition of obligation, that is, of the formal part 
of moral law, is prior to and more fundamental than 
our acknowledgment of God’s existence or our expe- 
rience of religion. 

Having thus separated the fields of obligation and of 
religion, we need to supplement our result by consider- 
ing their mutual relations. 

We are working with the hypothesis that religion and 
morality are both fundamentally true. Then, if religion 
be true, it is evident that an obligation to be religious 
is an essential part of the moral life. This follows from 
the view of obligation that has been presented. If obli- 
gation commands us to realize the highest possible ideal 
of personality, and if religion be true, how can we 
escape the obligation to include religious values in the 
ideal and in its realization? From this point of view 
religion is a part of morality. 

To this conclusion the average man tends to object. 
He will say that a man may, like Bertrand Russell, be 
moral without being religious. The answer to this criti- 
cism, however, is almost self-evident from the state- 
ment of the problem; it was not said that for every 
human being, unconditionally, religion is a part of 
morality; it was only said that if religion be true, it 
is a part of morality. The only man, then, who is not 
morally obligated to be religious is the man who believes 


MORAL BASIS 61 


that religion is not true; the acknowledgment of its truth 
carries with it the obligation to realize its value. That 
obligation cannot be postponed until some formal 
moment like that of joining a church or of avowing 
one’s intention to be religious, any more than the obli- 
gation to be good awaits the moment of our joining 
the Ethical Culture Society. It is immediate and imper- 
ative. 

A more subtle objection is sometimes raised by the 
theologian who fears to make religion a part of morality 
lest the uniqueness of religion be imperiled. That this 
is no empty fear is evidenced by the tendency of numer- 
ous thinkers to make religion no more than an interest 
in the conservation of other values or even than any 
social interest. But the view that has been defended 
does not mean at all that religion surrenders its unique- 
ness or becomes “mere morality.” Within “the moral 
empire” there is room for beauty and all its irreducible 
qualities; for truth and the laws of logic; and also for 
religion with every unique mystery and splendor that it 
can contribute to life. If religion be a part of morality, 
it is true that loyalty to obligation is a precondition 
to being religious; but it also means that it is our obli- 
gation to realize all the rich meaning that religion can 
contribute to life. None of the wine of life should be 
spilled merely because it is our duty to pour into the cup. 

The relation between obligation and religion has not, 
however, been completely stated when it is said that 
religion is a part of duty; for, after all, what our duty 
actually will be in any situation is dependent on the kind 
of universe this is. It is self-evident that no one can 
tell just what he ought to do to make this a better 
world merely by contemplating the formal law of obli- 
gation. Obligation must set to work with its eyes open, 
must take everything into account. In other words, it 


62 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


must face the whole universe as fully as it can, and 
consider, the universe being what it is, how the maximum 
values attainable in the present situation can actually 
be attained. 

The tendency of current ethical theory is unduly to 
limit the scope of the moral situation. Pragmatists, 
Dewey in particular, have inclined to interpret it in 
biological terms. The moral ideal then becomes the per- 
fect adjustment of the organism to its environment, 
including the other organisms with whom one has to do. 
This view, despite its pragmatic label, is abstract and 
artificial. What real human being has ever lived only 
for his biological organism and his physical and physio- 
logical environment? Experience is crowded with 
objects and values that are immaterial and that lead 
man’s interest far beyond his biological fate. Moral obli- 
gation commands us, it is true, to ignore no facts; all 
that the biological pragmatists say is relevant and 
should be considered; but while it is necessary, it is not 
sufficient. Moral obligation extends beyond what the 
eye can see into the field of all that the mind can see; 
and what we ought to do is to be chosen from among 
all the possibilities that are revealed to us by our most 
complete view of the universe. It is the task of religion 
to prevent the moral man from any artificial narrowing 
of his range to the needs of his body and his bank- 
account, and to expand his vision so that the spiritual 
possibilities of life will be real and vivid to him. It 
says, “If there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, 
think on these things.” 

The moral man who is loyal to obligation will there- 
fore be driven beyond himself by his own autonomous 
command. Duty can never be discovered or performed 
by the man who only looks within. The best can be 
found only by him who is looking for the best; the 


MORAL BASIS 63 


“adjustment” that the biological pragmatists seek can 
be found only in an adjustment to the universe. Thus 
the moral law commands us to seek light from science 
and history, from philosophy and experience, from the 
church and Bible, indeed, from every possible source. 
“Prove all things,” it decrees, “hold fast that which is 
good.” 

He who is driven beyond himself to seek light from 
every source, cannot stop short of God. There is a road 
that leads imperatively from obligation to God. In gen- 
eral, this fact has been recognized by religious thought, 
although it has not always been reasonably interpreted. 
It has been held, for instance, that moral law requires 
a divine lawgiver. That this traditional view is ques- 
tionable follows from the autonomy of moral law. Obli- 
gation is binding not because a foreign power, even God 
himself, legislates for me, but rather, because I legislate 
for myself; and, if I am true to my own moral reason, I 
cannot avoid acknowledging my responsibility. 

The rational way from obligation to God has been 
stated more cogently by Sorley in his Moral Values and 
the Idea of God than by any other recent writer. Briefly, 
the gist of his argument is as follows: We have sense 
perceptions, some of which are trustworthy and some 
not; we distinguish genuine perceptions from illusions 
and the like by building up a consistent system in which 
all true perceptions find their place. All of our per- 
cepts claim objective validity, and it is rational to trust 
those that are congruent with the consistent system as 
revealing to us an objective order of nature. Simi- 
larly, we have moral perceptions, which also claim 
objective validity; when we recognize an obligation we 
do not merely impose it on ourselves, but we judge that 
the universe is such that all persons similarly situated 
really ought to do as we do. Some of our moral per- 


64 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


ceptions are erroneous, but, as in the case of sense- 
perceptions, we are able to build up a consistent system 
out of the moral experiences, which it is rational to 
trust as revealing an objective moral order. This order 
can exist only in a Supreme Person, for only persons can 
experience obligation or value. In his argument thus 
incompletely sketched Sorley has made an important 
contribution to theistic thought that is worthy of more 
careful attention than it hag received. 

The way from obligation to God that was outlined by 
- Kant in the third postulate of the practical reason also 
contains more than a germ of truth. Our conception 
of the summum bonum, says Kant, includes not alone 
morality but also happiness proportioned to that moral- 
ity. Yet there is nothing about the moral law that 
guarantees happiness to him who obeys it. From these 
Kantian premises we may go on, modifying his thought, 
to point out that, as a matter of fact, loyalty to obliga- 
tion is one of the deepest sources of satisfaction. Indeed, 
all of the ideal values bring an exalted happiness to the 
soul, although there is no logical reason why that should 
take place. The universe, then, is such that only the 
highest values actually satisfy; and this fact can best 
be explained on the hypothesis that the source of all 
being is a unitary Person who respects obligation and, 
in the long run, gives happiness to the virtuous. 

One difficulty, however, remains to be considered. It 
was said that critics of religion are attacking the idea 
of a perfect God on the ground that if God be perfect 
there can be no moral task; the universe would be 
already perfect. This objection when analyzed falls 
into two parts: one connected with our ideal of democ- 
racy and the other with our ideal of progress. In behalf 
of democracy we are told that God cannot be a king; 
there is no more room for Oriental despots on earth or 


MORAL BASIS 65 


in heaven. We have socialized recitations and socialized 
churches; we must have a socialized and democratized 
universe. In behalf of progress, we are told that the 
fundamental] fact is that the universe is capable of being 
improved, and that therefore it is not perfect, and can- 
not have an ens perfectissimum as its cause. 

It is rather striking that many so-called modern ideas 
are as uncritical as their antiquated predecessors. In 
ancient times, it was excusable to ascribe to God the 
attributes of the monarch in the current form of gov- 
ernment; it is rather trivial for an enlightened modern 
to take the constitution of the United States as a model 
for the constitution of the kingdom of heaven. The 
notion of a democratic God is often very obscurely con- 
ceived; it is not clear whether it implies the election 
of a God every four years by some cosmic electoral col- 
lege, nor is there any definite provision for the con- 
tingency of a deadlock. We may as well face the fact 
that the universe in general and religion in particular 
contain some undemocratic factors. We all stand face 
to face with facts that we cannot prevent or control. 
Our very existence depends on a power not ourselves. 
If God is immanent in nature, aS seems reasonable to 
believe, he is a God of force, not waiting on human 
preferences. We must accept the universe, whether it 
suits the majority or not. 

In spite of these strictures on the current demand for 
a democratic God, it remains true that religion and 
democracy are close allies; but the fundamental laws of 
obligation and value are normative, not the subordinate 
and somewhat provincial ideal of democracy. 

The relations of religion to democracy may be shown 
in various ways. However exalted and absolute be our 
God, the very thought of God as Father of all is essen- 
tially democratic, for it implies the brotherhood of man. 


66 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


Professor Coe relevantly quotes a newspaper writer who 
remarked “that monotheism is inappropriate and incon- 
venient for nations that are fighting for nationalism.”?® 
Further, the goodness of God as revealed in our expe- 
rience is shown to be democratic in that he respects the 
moral autonomy of every person. No theory can justly 
deny this basic fact of our moral experience. Also, 
if the universe be the kind of moral order that our study 
of obligation takes it to be, then every individual per- 
son is an end-in-himself. There are, then, many demo- 
cratic as well as some undemocratic features in the 
idea of God; but in no event should any political theory 
be made the criterion of universal being. It must be 
remembered that democracy is futile if it does not rest 
on the obligation of the community to recognize and 
attain the highest values, subject to the actual laws of 
the universe as it is. 

Belief in democracy is nearer to the heart of morality 
than is belief in progress. Belief in democracy in some 
form follows from the fact that every person is an auton- 
omous moral agent and, as such, worthy of respect. 
Belief in progress has less substantial foundations. He 
who does his duty will, of course, work for progress; 
but it by no means follows that actual progress will 
ensue in proportion to the work done. The belief in 
the continuous progress of man on this earth is, as has 
clearly been demonstrated, a modern idea, and a very 
influential one.*7 But more than one voice has been 
raised questioning whether the concept is sound. 

At any rate, the idea of progress that is to continue 
indefinitely on this planet is, to say the least, somewhat 
dubious from the point of view of geology and astron- 





*The Psychology of Religion, p. 75. 
“See A. C. Knudson, Present Tendencies in Religious Thought 
(New York: The Abingdon Press), pp. 28f., 51ff., 272ff. 


MORAL BASIS 67 


omy; and it is considerably less important for religion 
than the idea of loyalty to obligation. Over against 
the prospect of continuous progress in this earth as 
the goal of humanity is the religious faith in immor- 
tality. This faith is not incompatible with zeal for 
progress; but in the light of this faith, the planet earth 
may well be regarded as a hotbed for immortal souls. 
There should be a certain amount of progress in the care 
of hotbeds, but the degree of progress in that respect is 
no measure of the real progress in the universe. Meta- - 
physical progress, eternal development, is, I believe, a 
religious faith that follows from the nature of moral 
obligation; for the end commanded by duty will never 
be attained until every person has exhausted all of his 
possibilities of ideal-forming and ideal-realizing: that is 
to say, it will never be finally attained. 

This statement forces to the front once again the prob- 
lem of the perfectible universe implied by morality and 
the perfect God implied by religion. If by religion we 
mean the Christian religion, it is safe to say that this 
problem, of which so much has been made, is largely 
verbal. Christianity believes in a perfect God, but it 
has never believed that the universe is now perfect. 
Further, its conception of a perfect God has not meant 
that God was static, until God fell into the hands of 
the theologians. For early Christianity, God was a 
being in whose life something happens,—creation, atone- 
ment, joy over sinners that repent, the growth of the | 
Kingdom. As Professor Swenson pointed out in discus- 
sion at a meeting of the American Philosophical Asso- 
ciation some years ago, the God of Spinoza—timeless, 
changeless, all-inclusive—was not the God of Christian- 
ity, for Christianity essentially believes in the reality of 
change. Sinners, it holds, can be converted: “my Father 
worketh hitherto, and I work.” 


68 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


In harmony with the Christian view of man is the 
view revealed by moral psychology. Personality, we 
have been discovering, is capable of seemingly inexhaus- 
tible development. New experiences keep flooding in; 
new values are created, “out of three sounds, not a fourth 
sound, but a star.” <A static perfection is not perfect. 
The law of obligation always drives beyond what we 
are to more discoveries, higher values, new relations with 
others and with God. 

The view of God that is implied by these facts is diffi- 
cult to state satisfactorily; but at least we may admit 
that the actual facts of our world become much easier 
to interpret if instead of the utterly timeless God of the 
theologians we have a living God, for whom the evo- 
lution that is his favorite method is no mere form, but 
is a real experience. A God to be a God must know 
everything that can be known and be able to do every- 
thing that can be done; but a rational, responsible, 
personal God must be loyal to the conditions of rational- 
ity, responsibility, and personality, unless the cosmos 
is mere chaos. We have been too anxious in defense of 
abstract concepts of eternity, infinity, and perfection to 
be thoroughly alert to the interpretation of reality. A 
moral God, eternally active, eternally creative, eternally 
reasonable, is indeed a God who will forever and change- 
lessly be loyal to the same fundamental principles of 
obligation and value; but he is also a God for whom 
progress is a real experience, and a God who is limited 
by the very conditions of his being.*® 


7. CONCLUSION OF THE CHAPTER 


Religious values, we have shown, rest on a moral basis, 
just as religious beliefs must have a logical basis. True 





1sSee Bishop F. J. McConnell, Is God Limited? (New York: The 
Abingdon Press, 1924.) 


MORAL BASIS 69 


religion obeys the laws of reason and of obligation, as 
Rudolph Otto points out on the first page of The Idea 
of the Holy. The road to God lies through reason and 
obligation; but, as we shall see in later chapters, the 
values of religion make substantial additions to the 
values of logic and of moral obligation. 


CHAPTER III 
TRUTH AND VALUE IN RELIGION 


1. ARE VALUES Sussect To LoGIcAL INVESTIGATION? 


THE attentive reader will have noted that while Chap- 
ter I was chiefly concerned with the basis of belief, 
Chapter II dealt chiefly with the problem of value. 
Beliefs, of course, may be true or false. They are con- 
victions about what is, and they may and must be tested 
by the standards of logical thinking. But values, many 
are inclined to assert, are purely subjective and so can- 
not be “true” or “false.” They merely exist. This view 
regards values as cases of liking or disliking, approval 
or disapproval. A liking cannot be true or false, like a 
belief; you either like prunes or you do not like them. 
There is no “true” value attaching to prunes. Your 
liking or disliking is the sole answer to the question 
about their value. 

Yet, if the definition given in Chapter I was correct, 
the study of values is more than a study of desires and 
aversions; it involves a reference to ideals, such as the 
ideal of coherence or of obligation, by which the desires 
and aversions are organized and criticized. Our study 
thus far has tended to confirm the assertion of ideal 
laws and structures which judge the desires of the natu- 
ral man, and thus to establish the conclusion that values 
are subject to logical investigation. 


2. DOES THE VALUE OF RELIGION DEMONSTRATE Its 
TRUTH? 


The relation between truth and value would easily be 
70 


TRUTH AND VALUE 71 


settled if every belief arising from a valued experience 
were true. It is the tendency not only of a certain type 
of pragmatism but also of the uncritical religious soul 
to take the step from value to truth without hesitation. 
Apologists for religion frequently avail themselves of 
this tendency. 

They often argue that the most satisfactory—perhaps 
the only—demonstration of the truth of religious beliefs 
lies in their value for life. But these same persons, 
if they are fair, must admit that many mutually contra- 
dictory beliefs are valuable to those that hold them. 
The nervous system may be soothed, the moral nature 
inspired, the spiritual life quickened, by Christian Sci- 
ence, by Roman Catholicism, or by Buddhism. Now, 
Christian Science, Roman Catholicism, and Buddhism 
cannot all be true, unless truth is chaotic nonsense; yet 
each of them appears to be more or less valuable to 
many people. The argumentum ad bonum proves too 
much; and we are driven to admit that valuable results 
may follow from untrue beliefs. 

If we explore further the relations between truth and 
value, we have occasion to inquire whether the true is 
always valuable. ‘In a sense” (as philosophers annoy- 
ingly say) it is always valuable for a truth-loving mind 
to know what is true. But “in another sense” it often 
turns out that truth is not valuable. It may be dispirit- 
ing, painful, crushing. To learn that one’s earthly all 
has been lost through unscrupulous agents, or that one’s 
trusted friend is false, or that one’s fondest desires are 
doomed to frustration, is to learn the truth. Such truth 
does not add to what would commonly be regarded as the 
value of life. Perhaps under the circumstances it is 
valuable to know the worst. “Where everything is bad,” 
wrote Bradley in his notebook, “it must be good to know 
the worst; where all is rotten it is a man’s work to 


72 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


ery stinking fish.”! True enough; but if this were the 
only value we could look for in the truth about religion, 
it would be a wretched enough substitute for the hopes 
and promises of salvation. It would be a surrender of 
real religious value. 

Assuming the truth of the essential principles of 
Christianity, the objective student of history will have 
to admit that those principles have not always borne 
worthy fruit in the lives of sincere Christians. Nietzsche 
was not wholly wrong when he said that the Christian 
virtues of love, pity, and humility produce a weak and 
slavish type of life; some Christians are weak and 
slavish. Nor is popular criticism wholly wrong when it 
asserts that religion breeds effeminacy ; some Christians 
are effeminate. The friends of religion as well as its 
critics have denounced the evils that flow from certain 
factors in religion which, taken in themselves, are true 
and good. For example: the social expression of religion 
requires ritual; but ritual often leads to a deadly for- 
malism that destroys the very spirit of religion. Reli- 
gion is impossible without beliefs; yet loyalty to good 
and true beliefs may engender a type of excessive con- 
servatism and traditionalism that easily becomes hostile 
both to tolerance and to growth. An exclusive and one- 
sided allegiance to religion often leads to a spirit that 
is jealous of culture and the arts, hostile to science, 
timorous and fearful lest these other values should 
undermine or replace religion. The reader of Andrew 
D. White’s The Warfare of Theology and Science can 
scarcely suppress the reflection that religion has often 
behaved more like a spoiled and jealous child than like 
a man, confidently reliant on God and his infinite power. 
This catalogue of ills that sometimes arise from religion 





‘F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality (London: George Allen 
& Unwin, Ltd., 1908), preface, 


TRUTH AND VALUE 13 


is incomplete; but it suffices to suggest that true beliefs 
may have evil consequences.” 

But have we been fair? Is it the truth from which 
these evil consequences have been derived, or have they 
resulted rather from a failure to apprehend the truth 
rightly, either in itself or in its relations to other truth? 
It may well be that this objection is sound; none the 
less there remains untouched this residual fact: that a 
true belief often has bad consequences if that belief is 
not rightly apprehended and rightly related to other 
truth. I may correctly believe that veracity is a virtue. 
But if I rely on that true belief as my justification for 
telling everyone I meet precisely what I think of him, 
my truth causes personal disaster and social havoc. 

If we are to attain a just estimate of the relation 
between truth and value in religion, we must recognize 
a further qualification, namely, that religion should not 
be expected to produce all kinds of value. It has a 
work of its own: that of relating the total life of human 
individuals and societies to God by moral and mystical 
bonds. Religion claims sovereignty over the whole of 
life, but in no case does a man’s religious spirit actually 
create the rest of his being. First the natural, then the 
spiritual; the task of the spiritual is to do the best that 
can be done in taming and developing the natural. J[eli- 
gion does indeed remake a man or a society; but it 
remakes that man, that society. It does not annihilate 
them in order to substitute entirely different beings. it 
lifts the real toward the ideal. 

It is, therefore, an error to expect that religion will 
suddenly transform nature or the social order. The 
values and laws of religion do not abolish or supersede 
other values and laws, but they add a new potency to 
natural life and give it a new direction. 


4S5ee Chap. IV, § 3. 


74 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


3. How May TRUE VALUE BE DISTINGUISHED FROM 
APPARENT VALUE? 


Thus far we have seen that valuable results may in 
some instances follow from untrue beliefs and evil 
results from true beliefs; also that there are numerous 
types of value which it is not reasonable to expect 
religion to produce. It would appear evident that the 
relation between value and truth is not so empirically 
immediate as popular apologetics assumes. Neverthe- 
less, there is an intimate relation between religious truth 
and value. Religion is, as Héffding says, essentially a 
belief in the conservation of values. The whole enter- 
prise of religion is based on the faith that what is truly 
valuable is also real and eternal; and is not the clew 
right here—the truly valuable? 

Must we not distinguish between the apparently val- 
uable, just as we distinguish between appearance and 
reality in other realms of experience? This distinction 
does not imply that the apparent is unreal, but only that 
it does not adequately express the real. Anything, we 
may say, has apparent value if we enjoy or approve it, 
or find it precious or satisfying at the moment of expe- 
rience. It is not so easy to define the conditions under 
which we assert the presence of real value. But is it 
not true that when we assert that any object is really 
valuable, we mean, first, that it not merely appears 
valuable at the moment but would appear so to an 
“impartial observer” who took all truth into account; 
and, secondly, that it conforms to those ideal impera- 
tives which the mind recognizes as laws constitutive of 
true value? Such imperatives are the norms of logic, 
of ethics, of esthetics, and of religion. 

Religion is concerned with true value, not with appar- 
ent value. She will not, when she understands herself, 


TRUTH AND VALUE 75 


rest her case on the mere presence or absence of apparent 
values. She will fix her eye on what James called “the 
long run,” and Spinoza “the aspect of eternity.” She 
will not boast that religion is proven to be true if the 
Christian succeeds in business, nor will she curse God 
and die if the Christian suffers from boils. She will 
cherish the eternal values, in the faith that no temporal 
expedients can redeem the time, since the eternal is 
(as Royce held) the only true practical. If religion is 
to be a power in the world, it will not be by conforming 
to “worldly” standards, but by shedding the light and 
power of the eternal on every worldly circumstance. 
Not every successful “drive” nor every comforting belief 
is a real value. Not every gracious religious experience 
proves the truth of the doctrine that led to it. There 
is the same need of “sterilizing one’s intellectual instru- 
ments” (as Bowne put it) in dealing with our valua- 
tions as in dealing with what science calls fact. ‘“Be- 
loved, believe not every spirit, but prove the spirits, 
-whether they are of God; because many false prophets 
are gone out into the world” (1 John 4.1). The value 
of an experience or belief is not a guarantee of its truth ; 
but the values, like the spirits, should be proved. This 
does not imply that a mathematical demonstration is 
necessary or possible; it does mean that religious faith 
should be grounded in a coherent whole of truth, not in 
the haphazard likes and dislikes of the moment. 


4, A DIFFICULTY IN THIS VIEW 


This point of view might appear to mean that the 
relation between truth and value is such that only the 
man who is wise enough to grasp truth comprehensively 
can experience true value. The ideal goal of complete 
knowledge of truth and appreciation of value should 
indeed never cease to attract and stir the human mind. 


16 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


No one ought to be satisfied with knowing less than he 
ean know. Yet this does not mean that the realm of value 
is closed to the humble and unlearned. If the source 
of all reality is a Supreme Person, God himself, and the 
universe is a society of persons, then God is immanent in 
all finite life. The Divine Person works in and with the 
human person. Whether the human being is wise or 
foolish, learned or ignorant, righteous or sinful, the 
divine purpose is always the same, namely, the redemp- 
tion of the individual and of society. The supremely 
good God works with all his creatures to this end. 
God, then, is working with every man. Religion arises 
when man becomes conscious of the will to cooperate 
with the God on whom he is dependent. In such a uni- 
verse, what is the status of the unlearned and ignorant? 
Granted the minimum of intelligence essential to relli- 
gion, and granted a good will toward God, a man may 
be quite innocent of science, philosophy, and theology, 
and yet may experience the sense of personal coopera- 
tion between God and himself, himself and God, which 
is the essence of religion. His theological beliefs 
(beyond the minimum) may be inadequate or even false; 
if his will is in harmony with the divine as he appre- 
hends it, God is working good in him through, but in 
spite of, his false beliefs. We must take seriously the 
doctrine of divine immanence. But disastrous practical 
and theoretical error ensues when the man who thus 
experiences the immanent God uses his feeling of reli- 
gious value to justify his false beliefs. Calamitous 
instances of this procedure are found by every teacher of 
philosophy and religion and by every religious worker. 
The man who is seeking to think his religion through 
will endeavor to criticize and to understand as clearly 
as he may his faith that the truly real is valuable and 
the truly valuable is real. But he will not yield to the 


TRUTH AND VALUE 77 


temptations of an easy-going, this-worldly pragmatism. 
He may incline to Royce’s absolute pragmatism, but he 
will keep before his mind Bowne’s warning that God 
does not pay every Saturday night—and when he does, 
very rarely in cash. 


5. TRANSITION TO THE NExt CHAPTER 


We are now ready to begin, in the folowing chapter, 
the more specific study of religious values. In the light 
of the conclusions of this chapter, we shall aim to avoid 
any hasty identification of truth with value; but we 
shall seek, rather, for the true values of religion. 

Since value is, as is generally agreed, a conscious 
experience of persons, and has no meaning whatever 
apart from consciousness, we shall begin our study by 
devoting Chapter IV to “The Human Values of 
Religion.” 


CHAPTER IV 
THE HUMAN VALUES OF RELIGION 


1. THE PROBLEM OF THE CHAPTER 


WE have now reached the point where we may begin 
the specific study of religious values. AJ] value is the 
conscious experience of persons, and the study of reli- 
gious values must begin with the empirical facts. These 
facts are to be found in the fields that are studied by 
history and psychology. At a later point (Chapter 
VIT) an attempt will be made to describe the psychologi- 
cal factors that enter into the heart of religious experi- 
ence, namely, worship. In this and the two succeeding 
chapters the aim will be to define and then to interpret 
philosophically the values of religion as they are 
revealed by the larger facts of its history. The special 
problem of this chapter, then, will be to inquire what 
contributions religion has made historically to the value 
of human life. For the purposes of this chapter we shall 
not ask whether these human values are “apparent” or 
“real,” mere “value-claims” or “true” values. 

We shall leave behind every apologetic motive together 
with every question or doubt; dogma, doctrine, and 
theology will be left defenseless and uncriticized. Not 
theory, but historical fact; not proof, but life itself, will 
concern us. If any belief be as true or as false as you 
please, in this chapter we are indifferent to that fact. 
Without probing nicely into questions of the logical 
cogency of anyone’s creed, we shall concern ourselves 
only with the question about the value of religion in 


the life of man. What does religion do for human life? 
78 


HUMAN VALUES 79 


Does it make life better or worse? Does it help or hinder 
the attainment of the other goods of life? In short, 
What are the human values of religion? 


2. DEFINITIONS OF RELIGION AND VALUE FOR THE 
PURPOSES OF THIS CHAPTER 


When we hear the word “religion,” we naturally think 
of our own religion, that in which we have received our 
early training, or to which we have come by our more 
mature experience and reflection. But if we were to 
define everything that religion means to us, we might 
have difficulty in persuading others to recognize every 
factor in our conception as essential to religion; so that 
a merely individualistic definition will not do. We must 
seek one in which our religion is included, but which 
also finds room for what is truly religious in every 
religious experience or belief. The attempt to reach a 
valid general definition of religion is one that cannot be 
abandoned. Despite the obvious necessity of postpon- 
ing a final definition to the end of one’s investigation, 
a working definition is always needed at the outset, if 
we are to know where the field of our study is located. 

The task of finding such a working definition is 
complicated by the fact that the word “religion” may 
mean either a mode of life or a scientific concept used 
to describe that life. Now, the religious mode of life 
might well exist, whether in primitive man or in our 
neighbors, without the use of a scientific concept of 
religion or even without the willingness to say, “I am 
religious.” With reference to the scientific concept itself 
no agreement obtains. Pages 339 to 361 of Professor 
Leuba’s A Psychological Study of Religion are filled 
with a collection of more than two score of definitions, 
to which might be added many more. 

We may be able in this confusion to agree on at least 


80 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


one essential trait of a good definition of religion. It 
must represent religion as something living and devel- 
oping, and not as static and unchanging; it must, then, 
be a law of life. If you look for any traits which appear, 
in unchanged form, in the religion of the Bushmen of 
Australia, of Socrates, of Saint Paul, of Spinoza, and of 
ex-President Eliot, you will deserve to look in vain, 
because you will have forgotten that the essence of reli- 
gion must be found in some law of life rather than in 
any dead uniformity. A sound definition will not bea 
Platonic idea, but an Aristotelian entelechy: not an 
abstract concept, but a functional principle. 

Elsewhere the present writer has suggested that his- 
torical religion, whatever its differences, always ex- 
presses at least one common function or attitude. 
“Religion,” his proposed historical definition runs, “‘is 
the total attitude of man toward what he considers to be 
superhuman and worthy of worship, or devotion, or 
propitiation, or at least of reverence.’’4 

Attitudes toward our fellow human beings, then, are 
not (contrary to numerous current views) to be regarded 
as religious unless they spring from a deeper attitude 
toward a superhuman being of some sort; and atti- 
tudes toward the superhuman are not religious unless 
the superhuman power or powers be deemed worthy of 
worship, that is, be in some sense a source of value. In 
primitive thought this value is very crudely conceived 
as “mana”; to-day, a Rudolph Otto interprets it as 
“das Heilige”’ (“the Holy”). Yet a common function is 
performed by both of these beliefs, namely, a reverence 
for values and a faith in their conservation. 

W. G. Everett, therefore, is near to the heart of the 
matter when he suggests that the experiences of religion 





1An Introduction to Philosophy, p. 318. In our discussion we shall 
usually refer to “the superhuman” as God. 


HUMAN VALUES 81 


“have as their center of interest the cosmic fortune of 
values.”? It is true that the Bushmen of Australia have 
very little interest in “the cosmic fortune of values.” 
This element, then, must be regarded not as an actual 
factor always present, but as a limit which any life 
called religious is approaching or tends to approach. 

The other element in our topic, that of value, still 
awaits definition. It has just reminded us of its existence 
by appearing in the expression “the cosmic fortune of 
values.” 

For the purpose of this chapter the term “value” is 
less in need of further definition than the term “relli- 
gion.” Whatever the psychologists or the metaphysi- 
cians may finally have to say about value, everyone will 
doubtless agree that by a value he means something 
that he prizes, something worthful, precious, desirable: 
something that meets our need, something that fulfills 
our ideal of what ought to be. Whatever for its own 
sake we thus prize is called an intrinsic value; what- 
ever is only a means to the attainment of intrinsic value 
is instrumental. 

It must be recognized that this distinction raises 
problems such as that as to whether there are many 
intrinsic values (as pluralism holds) or whether all 
reduce to one, such as the organic whole of personality, 
or of society, or of the universe. But, for our purposes, 
we may assume a practical and at least relative differ- 
ence between the fact that we prize religion for its own 
sake and the fact that it ministers to the attainment of 
other values. We should note that the term used to 
denote the contrary of value is disvalue or evil. What- 
ever is unworthy, or hinders the attainment of what is 
worthful, is, either intrinsically or instrumentally, dis- 
value. If we are to deal fairly with the theme of the 

*Moral Values (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1918), p. 382. 


82 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


“Human Values of Religion,” it is necessary to con- 
sider also its possible disvalues. To this aspect of the 
subject we shall turn for a while. 


3. THe HUMAN DISVALUES OF RELIGION 


The critics of religion have always been alive to its 
defects, and none of its friends, however ardent, could 
maintain that the presence of religion in life is always 
wholly good both in itself and in its consequences. It 
might well be agreed that this would be true of a proper 
attitude toward the true religion. But in our present 
study we are interested in actual religious life as it 
appears in history, not in the ideal of propriety and 
truth. Let us proceed to enumerate some of the ele- 
ments of disvalue that may be found to exist in historical 
religion. . 

During the previous generation Nietzsche made 
famous the charge that religion, or at least Christianity, 
was essentially slavish and hence bad. It is doubtless 
true that religion tends to accentuate the dependence of 
man on the superhuman, and the infinite superiority 
of the cosmic powers to the human individual. It is 
also true that Judaism, Buddhism, and Christianity, in 
particular, inculcate the virtues of love for all and pity 
for the weak and suffering. Nor can it be denied that 
these very virtues in excess sometimes breed a false 
humility, a substitution of tender emotion for strength of 
character, and more sympathy with inferiority than 
desire for excellence. The great products of the religious 
spirit, it is true, makes Nietzsche’s charge of slavishness 
ridiculous, if it be intended to designate an essential 
trait of Christianity or of religion in general. But in 
the sense that a slavish spirit is a disvalue sometimes 
arising from religion the charge is not without founda- 
tion. 


HUMAN VALUES 8&3 


Again, it is said that religion breeds effeminacy, that 
it appeals to women and children, but that it lacks mas- 
culinity. Insofar as it attracts men, they are said to be 
effeminate types or to be rendered effeminate by religion. 
True it is that the rédle of feeling in many religious 
experiences characterizes those experiences as predomi- 
nantly passive rather than active, and, insofar, as 
feminine rather than masculine (according to the tradi- 
tional view of sex differences which is by no means 
proved). Nor can it be denied that in contemporary 
American religion the distinctively religious aspects of 
church life are often cultivated more devotedly by women 
than by men, and that men who move in a religious 
society where they are largely in the minority, more or 
less unconsciously resort to a kind of screen of effem- 
inacy aS an instinctive protective coloration. Even 
pastors occasionally succumb to this subtle influence. 
There is, then, a real evil here; although any impartial 
survey will make clear that effeminacy is no universal 
or necessary trait of great religious personalities. It 
is sentimental misrepresentation, and not historical fact, 
that has pictured Jesus in such a light. Every great 
religion makes a profound appeal to the powers of intel- 
lect and achievement, and so to what is regarded as the 
essentially masculine. The disvalue of effeminacy is a 
fact, but it is surely not inherent in religion, nor a neces- 
sary concomitant of it. 

Many great religious reformers, like Buddha, the 
Hebrew prophets, and Jesus, have attacked another evil 
tendency which keeps recurring in religion: the ten- 
dency to formalism, to an overemphasis of external 
rites and forms, which, carried to an extreme, passes 
from noble and significant ritual, through excessive cere- 
monialism, into thoroughgoing externalism and _ idol- 
atry, which substitutes the act for the spirit and the 


84 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


thing for the god. We shall not here seek to appraise 
the just claims of ritual in worship. We are only con- 
cerned to point out the manifest contradiction that 
excessive formalism introduces into religion. In purely 
formal acts, thought and feeling have vanished, the sense 
of relation to the superhuman is forgotten, and values 
are ignored. Here is a disvalue, springing from one 
aspect of religion itself, which tends to destroy real 
religion; to take it from the spirit and deliver it over to 
mere motor habit. 

Another evil of religion, in some respects allied to 
formalism, yet different from it, is conservatism or 
traditionalism. Conservatism tends to perpetuate a ten- 
dency to formalism once established; it is not, however, 
necessarily formalistic, and seemingly tends to function 
to preserve religion rather than to bore from within as 
does formalism. Why, then, it may be asked, is con- 
servatism not a value? Does it not preserve the sacred 
treasures of the past? Does it not cherish religion 
against destructive foes? Is it not humanity’s guar- 
antee against anarchy and barbarism in every field? In 
view of these challenges, he would be rash who would 
pronounce conservatism wholly evil. It belongs in the 
class of the mixed, to which Plato not infrequently made 
appeal. For along with the elements of worth which 
must be recognized there are also elements of a very 
different sort. If the spirit of conservatism attain full 
control, it will function to maintain the entire status 
quo unchanged. Beliefs, types of experience, and prac- 
tices are to continue as they have been and shall be, 
world without end. The infinite has been sufficiently 
revealed, and the proper emotional and active attitudes 
toward the infinite completely categorized long ago. 
What is there for men to do but to continue in the enjoy- 
ment of the blessings bestowed upon them by the past? 


HUMAN VALUES 85 


Conservatism so magnifies the function of preservation 
of the best in the past as to lay its dead hand upon 
the present and deny it the right to live and grow. It 
becomes intolerance and wages a quasi-holy war against 
every tradition or form of life that differs, if only by a 
hair’s breadth, from its own. The spirit thus engendered 
is far from that recommended by the ethical teachings 
of religion itself. Extreme conservatism, then, like for- 
malism, amounts to a self-destruction of religion; but 
since it can point to so rich and many-sided a herit- 
age from the past, the dangers of conservatism are 
much more subtle and slow-working than those of for- 
malism. 

If we find in religion all elements of human nature, 
we may regard the evils thus far mentioned as arising 
from the excess of some one element: slavishness and 
effeminacy, for example, from an excess of feeling, for- 
malism from an excess of standardized action, and con- 
servatism from all elements, it is true, but especially 
from an excessive respect for the intellectual achieve- 
ments of the past. Since these forms of disvalue char- 
acterize religion itself as more or less evil where they 
prevail, we may regard them as intrinsic disyalues of 
religion. But we also find instrumental disvalues in 
religion; factors in it which operate to hamper or to 
destroy other values in life, such as the scientific, the 
philosophical, and even the values of moral progress. 
In calling attention to this fact we do not forget the 
services of religion to culture and to science. The 
point is, however, clearly to be made that despite those 
great services there has also been the other side of the 
shield; and even to-day very large numbers of the reli- 
gious, both leaders and followers, are suspicious of or 
openly hostile to esthetic and scientific activities or to 
any reform that means change in approved conventions. 


86 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


4, LIMITS OF THE HUMAN VALUE OF RELIGION 


It is not to be supposed that an exhaustive list of the 
ills that man owes to religion has been presented. The 
catalogue has been incomplete; it does not pretend to 
a priori necessity like the Kantian table of categories. 
It aims only to make clear that religion as it exists is 
not wholly valuable. As a‘further precaution, it should 
be noted that religion, even at its best, with these evils 
suppressed or eliminated, is not all of life, although it is 
related to all of life. As much injustice may be done 
to any cause by expecting too much of it as by belittling 
its true value. In order to avoid doing this injustice 
to religion it should be remarked that religion cannot 
(or should not) pretend to impart intelligence to the 
unintelligent, nor to solve economic problems, nor to 
guarantee human freedom from bodily ills. When one 
expects these results one may well depart from religion 
with a false estimate of what religion has actually 
accomplished in human history. 

Religion, we have said, will not impart intelligence. 
A religious awakening may impart a new stimulus and 
zest to the intellectual life, or may vitalize dormant 
powers of mind. The great leaders of the Christian 
Church from Saint Paul to Saint Augustine, Luther, 
Calvin, Wesley, Cardinal Newman, Phillips Brooks, and 
Albert Schweitzer, have been mighty men of valor in the 
realm of thought. But all great religions have made 
their appeal also to the common man, however unintel- 
lectual and untrained he may be. Christianity, as Har- 
nack is fond of pointing out, was something which the 
serving-maids of Ephesus could appropriate. There is 
indeed a certain minimum of intelligence below which 
religion is impossible; a mind must be able in some 
measure to grasp a few fundamental ideas about God 


HUMAN VALUES 87 


and man and human conduct, that is, about “man’s 
place in the cosmos,” if religion is to take root in that 
mind at all. But observation of the individual dif- 
ferences among men indicates that there are wide varia- 
tions in their native capacity. There is no reason to 
believe that religion creates new capacity, or supplies 
deficiencies in education. A religious experience, how- 
ever satisfying, or a religious belief, however firmly and 
reverently held, does not of itself endow its bearer with 
any special insight into questions of scientific or his- 
torical fact. However true it be that the facts of 
religious history may never be appreciatively inter- 
preted by a historian to whom religion is not real, it is 
also true that the religious must be supplemented by the 
scientific and historical spirit before it is competent to 
pronounce on questions of scientific and historical fact. 

In the present age it is worth while to emphasize the 
fact that religion does not solve economic problems. 
Such problems are the burning ones of to-day; how 
much fiercer to-morrow’s conflagration will be who 
knows? Has religion, then, no message for the social 
need? Most assuredly it has. It calls society to consider 
its Maker, to face the meaning of life, and to seek for 
true and permanent value, that which is eternal. The 
religious spirit, when true to itself, is the soul of every 
undertaking; nothing human will be foreign to it. It 
drives men on toward an ideal solution of every prob- 
lem; is the pervading stimulus of the whole of life. It 
drives on, but it does not build the roads on which to 
travel. It creates the vision of a divine plan in life, but 
it does not furnish the tools and instruments for build- 
ing a mansion here below in harmony with the divine 
idea. Religious idealism is, in this world, impractical 
and futile, unless it joins hands with scientific knowl- 
edge of conditions and means. Hence it is that the 


88 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


social and economic ideas of religious personalities are 
often fantastic and unreal. The soul of the new order 
must indeed come from religion, but the body must come 
from the sociologists and economists. Only in the union 
and appropriate functioning of soul and body will the 
organism live and grow. Religion needs science. 

Finally, it was said that religion does not guarantee 
freedom from bodily ills. There will at once occur to 
the mind of the reader numerous objections to this state- 
ment. Has not religion often taught that a complete 
conquest of the body was possible? Is not its ministry 
often a ministry of the healing of disease? Have not 
history and modern instances abundantly proved its 
power over sickness and suffering? While all this is 
true, it must be admitted that for one person who has 
sought and found in religion healing for disease, there 
are Many others, Just as genuinely religious, who have 
continued to suffer; and in the end, all die, the just and 
unjust alike. 

Whatever physical well-being religion may bring— 
and it is no doubt a greater force for bodily health than 
most men know—such a result is incidental, a by- 
product. It is a grateful shade cast by the tree on 
certain weary travelers in the hot season; it is not the 
very root and life of the tree. Religion is the total rela- 
tion of the life to that Power which is ealled God; and 
the man who desires health as his prime aim, and God 
only on condition of his gaining health, does not com- 
prehend the spirit of religion. The religious soul desires 
God unconditionally ; this means the unconditional faith 
that what is supremely valuable will never be destroyed; 
it does not mean the unconditional guarantee of physi- 
cal life and health. 

In our attempt to understand the human values of 
religion we have thus far considered the evils, the dis- 


HUMAN VALUES 8&9 


values, to which religion gives rise or may give rise, and 
have pointed out some of the things that religion may 
not justly be expected to do for men. Although doubt- 
less the most precious possession of human life, it is not 
an Aladdin’s lamp, nor, in itself, a panacea for all ills. 
With the recognition of the abuses and limitations of 
religion, we have advanced one stage in our journey 
toward the understanding of the human values of 
religion. 


5. How RELIGION MEETS THE ILLS oF LIFE 


The remainder of our journey will be concerned with 
the search for positive values. Since it is the human 
values of religion in which we are interested, we may 
well approach our problem from the standpoint of the 
nature of human life in general, then proceeding to 
inquire what religion is worth to it, rather than con- 
fining ourselves to the religious aspects of life. The 
former method is much more broad in its scope, and 
lends promise of a fairer final estimate of the place of 
religion in life as a whole. It cannot, of course, be 
completely carried out within the limits of a single 
chapter; but it may be applied to some extent. 

If one surveys life with the thought of its value in 
mind, one is struck first of all by the ills from which 
life suffers, which seem to frustrate and even to destroy 
higher aims and purposes; and then by the needs of life, 
its fundamental longings and aspirations. We may 
fairly test the human value of religion by considering 
how it deals with life’s ills and its needs. 

Of the ills of life the most widespread and univer- 
sally experienced is the fact of suffering. About this 
fact religion by its very nature is most profoundly con- 
cerned. If it is interested in the cosmic fortune of 
values, every item of experience that hinders or renders 


90 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


impossible the fullest attainment of value becomes a 
problem. Suffering not only appears to do this, but it is 
in itself a disvalue, an evil. The Judzan prophet who 
describes the fall of man in Genesis does so in order to 
account for the suffering of woman in childbirth and of 
man in the hard tasks of agriculture. The four noble 
truths of Buddhism are “the existence of sorrow, the 
cause of suffering, the cessation of sorrow, and the eight- 
fold path that leads to the cessation of sorrow.” The 
author of the epistle ascribed to James defines pure 
religion as this, ‘to visit the fatherless and widows in 
their affliction and to keep oneself unspotted from the 
world.” 

Pain, suffering, sorrow, affliction—what does religion 
do with these tragic facts? It seeks to reduce suffering, 
yet recognizes that there seems to be an irreducible 
element of suffering in life, and it sees the problem of 
suffering in a world where God and value are asserted 
to be supreme. We are concerned with the value of the 
practical attitude which religion takes toward each of 
these aspects. 

Most great religions to a greater or less degree are 
touched with pity for a suffering world, and seek to feed 
the hungry and relieve the distressed. The human value 
of all such palliative measures is so obvious that it needs 
no special discussion. But religion recognizes that its 
humanitarian function is not the last or deepest word 
regarding suffering. For, strive as we will, perfect 
medicine and sociology as we may, it appears that suffer- 
ing can never entirely be removed from human life. 

Where religion is brought face to face with suffering 
as an irreducible fact, it is not and cannot be dumb. To 
the problem it has given different answers. It has said 
that this suffering was a punishment for sin, or a means 
of discipline and grace, or mere illusion and error, or 


HUMAN VALUES st 


a burden which God will give strength to bear, or an 
obstacle which a steadfast will may overcome and dis- 
regard, or a reminder that this world is not all. 
Religious faith may speak in many tongues about suf- 
fering, but what it says, being translated, has always 
one and the same meaning. This is the meaning: suffer- 
ing is not the brute mystery that it seems to be; it 
Serves some purpose, even though we know not what; 
it will be overcome, even though we know not how. 
Religion, then, meets the suffering of the individual 
with faith, a faith that comes to concrete and practical 
expression in various forms, but always as an act of 
implicit trust. What other resource than this in the face 
of suffering is not presently exhausted and baffled? 
Does not religion, based on faith in the Eternal, give 
to life its only indestructible refuge in hours of agony, 
and rescue it from despair or suicide? 

The last word of religion, then, is God. The mere 
hope or trust that the problem of suffering has a solu- 
tion would not long sustain the spirit were it not for the 
confidence that the solution of the mystery is in the 
hands of the supreme Power in the universe. This con- 
fidence immeasurably strengthens and fortifies the soul. 
Whether the belief in God is true or not does not now 
concern us; we are now interested only in observing that 
it adds substance and force to the religious conquest of 
suffering. 

Intimately connected with suffering is death, the mys- 
terious, which releases man from suffering by destroying 
life itself. It is a solution of our first problem which 
only creates a greater. Suffering usually leaves it pos- 
sible for the sufferer to appreciate some of the values 
of life; death makes all meaning and value impossible. 
Blank nothing is left; or so it seems. Death appears to 
be the negation of religion, for what can be “the cosmic 


92 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


fortune of values” when human persons, the most pre- 
cious of all values, are snuffed out like a candle? But it 
is precisely the acuteness of this challenge that drives 
men to religion, Schopenhauer’s classic essay “On 
Man’s Need of Metaphysics” is based on the thesis that 
it is the fact of death which gives the strongest impulse 
to philosophical reflection and to religious belief. 

Religion, in the presence of death, may assert itself 
by one of two attitudes: that is, either by the assertion 
that the fate of the right cause is assured, even though 
the individual perishes, or by the faith that human 
personality survives bodily death. So long as religion 
is religion it must refuse to accept the fact of death as 
final. 

Many finely attuned spirits are inspired to high living 
by the first of the two attitudes mentioned. I and we 
may perish, but the truly good, for which our life was 
lived, shall never die. Bernard Bosanquet has said, 
“Wherever a man is so carried beyond himself, whether 
for any other being or for a cause or for a nation, that 
his personal fate seems to him as nothing in compari- 
son of the happiness or the triumph of the other, there 
you have the universal basis and structure of religion.’ 
These beautiful words express the idea which underlies 
the attitude that we are now considering. The individ- 
ual may be so utterly devoted to his cause that he will 
gladly lay down his life in all literalness if but the 
cause live on. 

For some the religious conquest of death is thus 
achieved. But for most this conception is profoundly 
unsatisfactory. To them it is not clear what the cause 
is that will continue to endure after the last human 
being has vanished and left no conscious trace behind. 
The denial of personal immortality appears to most 


‘What Religion Is (London: Macmillan & Co., 1920), p. 5. 


HUMAN VALUES 93 


religious believers equivalent to the denial of ultimate 
value in life. Faith in immortal life is an all but uni- 
versal trait of religions. In the higher forms it is an 
expression of the belief that all personality must sur- 
vive because it is the most valuable fact in the universe, 
on which the real existence of all other values depends. 

Whichever of these two attitudes toward death reli- 
gion may assume, it means to proclaim its conviction 
that there is something in man’s life which death cannot 
slay. There are, it is true, wide differences of opinion to- 
day as to the actual effect on twentieth-century life of 
this belief in personal immortality. It may be admitted 
that with many the faith is but a weak and powerless 
shadow, and that with many others it is a morbid and 
unwholesome force, destroying perspective, blunting the 
sense of value, bewitching judgment, and obsessing the 
entire life. It may walk the streets of the New Jerusalem 
in fancy, rather than cleaning the streets of the earthly 
Jerusalem. But despite these serious evils, it is clear that 
the value of the religious attitude toward death far out- 
weighs its disvalue. It gives each believing soul the 
faith that his life has before it an endless road of possi- 
bility and service; it adds to the dignity of the moral 
law the serious reflection that we and all whom we affect 
are forever going to keep meeting again in our own 
persons the consequences of all our acts; it gives hope 
when death speaks only of despair. In defying death 
religion at once comforts with the thought of hope and 
compels attention to the actual eternity of moral values 
in an immortal society. Such thoughts of eternity, when 
held by a restrained faith that is not too eager to fill 
in imaginative details, imparts sacredness and elevation 
to human life. Religion thus fortifies the self-respect 
of man and consecrates his social obligations. 

When religion emerges from its most primitive forms 


94 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


it confronts an ill of man’s own making which becomes 
one of its acutest problems. I refer to sin. A Baby- 
lonian poem begins with the words, 


“T advanced in life, I attained to the allotted span; 
Wherever I turned, there was evil, evil. 

Oppression is increased, uprightness I see not. 

I cried unto God, but he showed not his face. 

I prayed to my goddess, but she raised not her head.” 


Moral evil must become a problem for religion, 
because it is hostility to the values with the conservation 
of which religion is concerned. Sin implies the volun- 
tary cutting off of the individual from the whole; the 
setting up of a realm of narrower special interest sepa- 
rated from the whole. The sinner thus is unwilling to 
face all the facts, to confront the context and implica- 
tions of his choice. He is complacent in the denial and 
contradiction of his own noblest aspirations. 

Religion meets this ill first of all by intensifying it, 
by dwelling on its heinous character, for religion is never 
willing to regard sin merely as the misfortune of a 
divided self; it summons the sinner to a cosmic bar 
and appeals to him to contemplate a divided universe 
resulting from his sin; the unity of his own soul, the 
social structure of life, and the harmony between man 
and the universe have all been rent asunder. Religion 
views sin as a cosmic tragedy. But religion, as soon as 
it recognizes the existence of sin, offers some way of 
escape. By sacrifice or penance or repentance, or by 
some combination of these or other means, religion pro- 
vides to the sinner some way of doing his part toward 
healing the breach which his act has wrought, and 
assures him that God has already done his part and that 
the Almighty will then receive him once more. Thus 
religion makes it possible to remold nearer to the heart’s 


HUMAN VALUES 95 


desire the world which sin had shattered to bits. It 
restores to life as a whole the meaning which sin had 
destroyed or denied. 

Another ill of life is ignorance, itself a prolific source 
of yet further ills. It is quite true that nothing can 
dispel ignorance save knowledge, and that any weaken- 
ing or impairment of the mind’s zeal in the search for 
knowledge would be a calamity to the race. As history 
shows, religion has sometimes operated as such a weak- 
ening force. But in the nature of religion it is difficult 
to discern any reason for this hostility. Religion, when 
performing its own function, does not seek to dispel 
ignorance by the folly of competing against science on 
its own ground. It does, however, have two character- 
istic ways of dealing with the fact of ignorance. On 
the one hand, it offers objects of faith which lie beyond 
demonstrable knowledge, but which present themselves, 
notwithstanding, as revelations of truth. It would be 
the height of presumption to pretend that by the way 
of scientific or philosophic speculation it is possible 
cogently to prove God, or immortality, or the cosmic 
supremacy of values. Since Kant such an enterprise 
has been foredoomed to failure. But religious life and 
experience give to the mind items of religious, as distinct 
from scientific, knowledge that do not dispel our scien- 
tific ignorance, but still give humanity the faith that 
our ignorance does not shut us off utterly from the 
truly real. “Religion,” says Professor Hocking, “is the 
present attainment in a single experience of those objects 
which in the course of nature are reached only at the 
end of infinite progression.”* Thus does religion sus- 
tain man in the infinite task of overcoming his own 
ignorance. 





‘The Meaning of God in Human Experience (Yale University 
Press, 1912), p. 31. 


96 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


In another fashion too does religion cope with human 
ignorance. In the midst of his trials Job is upheld by 
the thought, “He knoweth the way that I take” (Job 
23. 10). Indeed, one of the chief traits of the idea of 
God in all developed religions is that he is the one who 
knows all, who understands all, in whom is the key to 
every mystery, the solution to every riddle. The reli- 
gious soul may be ignorant, perplexed, doubtful, but 
so long as it is still able to say, “He knows,” it can 
still receive the comforts of religion. For Josiah Royce 
it was this reflection that constituted the essence of 
prayer. The underlying faith that there is meaning in 
all things, though we know not that meaning nor can 
surmise what it may be, is one of the most potent values 
which religion imparts to human life. 

In considering the relation of religion to the ills of 
life we shall mention but one more instance, namely, 
limitation and weakness. In a sense this sums up all 
other ills; man’s happiness, his physical existence, his 
good will, his knowledge, all are limited. He is puny, 
fragile, and powerless. For the Neoplatonists the orig- 
inal sin consisted precisely in this fact, that man willed 
himself to be finite, a separate individual, more or less 
dissevered from the one universe which should be an 
unbroken whole. Neoplatonism offers to the individual 
the possibility of reabsorption into the One by mystical 
ecstasy. Other religions, now in one fashion, now in 
another, assert that man by himself is indeed finite and 
impotent. But they agree that man need not continue 
“by himself,” for very near and accessible to weak and 
finite man is the infinite power of the universe. Differ- 
ent religious standpoints interpret in different ways 
the nature of this nearness and accessibility: all agree 
that man is not left alone, since the resources of an 
infinite universe are friendly to him. Thus does religion 


HUMAN VALUES 97 


meet this ill too, as it has confronted and conquered the 
other ills of life that we have considered. 


6. How RELIGION FuLFILLS HUMAN NEEDS 


Nor is religion merely a good physician to cure the ills 
of life; she is also a counselor in health, showing man 
how to meet the deepest needs of his life. 

Of the relation of religion to the physical and eco- 
nomic basis of life we have already spoken. It remains 
to consider the higher values. We shall limit the dis- 
cussion to three of the most profound needs of the 
human spirit: the need for unity, for purpose, and for 
permanence. 

Our natural life, at first, is a chaos; the infant’s 
blooming, buzzing confusion, made famous by James, 
continues for most of us in our higher selves far beyond 
the limits of infancy. If our thoughts and impulses be 
compared to persons, our life is often a raging mob; it 
needs to be a disciplined army, or, better, a town meet- 
ing with a regularly elected chairman, observing par- 
liamentary law. If they be compared to musical instru- 
ments, it is a shrieking discord; it should be a sym- 
phony. : 

Other interests than the religious, it is true, also aim 
at unity in human life, notably the philosophical. But 
the intellectual unification of human life at which 
philosophy aims is clearly an ideal goal, not an actual 
attainment. The religious synthesis is also, in a sense, 
an ideal; who is perfectly religious, who has exhausted 
the depth of communion with God? Nevertheless, there 
is a sense in which religion gives an actual unity to life 
that no other type of human experience can approximate. 
Religion is all-inclusive: it sets all our thoughts, feel- 
ings, and volitions in their relation to God, not merely as 
an ideal goal of life, but as a real and eternal Power, 


98 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


a Presence ever present. A unity in life may be orderly 
and systematic, like a complete card catalogue index in 
an Office, or like the plans of a General Staff in war- 
time; or it may be powerful, like the will of a Napoleon; 
or it may be passionate, like devotion to the beauty of 
music or painting or a beloved person. Yet none of these 
offers any such complete unification of life as does 
religion, which seeks the harmony of the whole per- 
sonality with the whole God. For this same reason 
religion, when she is true to herself, cannot ignore nor 
deny any of the other less inclusive interests of life. 
When she has done so she has lacked in comprehension 
of her own essential function. 

Consider, further, how religion meets the need of life 
for purpose. Easy enough it is to have purposes; to 
have a unified purpose is not so simple. For what shall 
we live? America first? Certainly our country has the 
right to expect the unique allegiance of all its citizens; 
but as the supreme purpose of life “America first” has 
no advantage over “Weltmacht oder Untergang.” Or 
shall the service of humanity utterly engross and satisfy 
us? Doubtless many who do not name the name of God 
are doing profoundly religious work in their service to 
humanity. But Bernard Bosanquet, in one of his recent 
writings, has remarked that when he hears one saying 
that he desires to serve, he is prompted to ask, ‘‘What 
on earth has he,to offer to others?’”® That is, humanity 
in the long run will not be best served unless its real 
needs are met. If religion is a real part of life, it is 
supreme; and only the purpose to serve God is in the 
long run inclusive enough adequately to sustain the 
server or to benefit the served. 

Human life also needs something permanent, some- 





‘Bosanquet, Some Suggestions in Ethics (London: Macmillan & 
Co., 1919), p. 3. 


HUMAN VALUES we, 


thing on which it can depend. The evanescence of the 
worldly hope men set their hearts upon has ever been 
the theme of poet and philosopher. Men long for that 
which will not perish, and which will give meaning to the 
fleeting moments of our life. Our days are like a series 
of bubbles, shining and radiant, then bursting as soon 
as blown. It is religion that points man to the eternal 
in the world of change and gives him a solid anchorage. 
A life thus established has nothing to fear from change, 
for in the midst of time and circumstance it is at peace 
with the unchanging. To quote Bernard Bosanquet 
again, by faith “we rise into another world while remain- 
ing here.’”® “To be rooted and grounded in the faith” 
is an expression sometimes used to mean that one has 
a certain store of unchangeable dogmatic prejudices; it 
should mean that one has confidence in a God of 
unchangeable power and goodness. 


7. TRANSITION TO THE NEXT CHAPTER 


In this chapter we have sought to describe the values 
which men have experienced in historical religion. We 
have also faced its disvalues and limitations, and have 
found that they are real enough, yet not essential to 
religion, while it is clear that they are far outweighed 
by the contribution which religion makes to assuaging 
the ills and satisfying the needs of human life. 

It is, however, important to remember the standpoint 
which has controlled this entire discussion: we agreed, 
that is, to leave out of account the question whether 
religious beliefs are true or not. This question is still 
on our hands, and, now that we have seen more clearly 
how potent religion is, it has become all the more press- 
ing. Religion has this potency, we have assumed, 
whether it be true or not; and our discussion has implied 

*What Religion Is, p. 9. 


100 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


that widely varying and mutually contradictory forms 
of religion may serve the values of life. Buddhism and 
Theosophy, Judaism and Christian Science and Moham- 
medanism, each may bring its faithful into a satisfy- 
ing relation to the Infinite. But not all the beliefs of 
all these faiths can be true, for they conflict. Does it 
then (as many to-day appear to be saying) make no dif- 
ference whether your religion is true or not, so long as 
it helps you? Is the only important trait of a religion 
the fact that it makes you happy, or well, or calm or 
socially-minded? Is the real existence of God, or of the 
future life, an unimportant and obscure question of a 
pedantic theology, and do the human values of religion 
remain untouched, whatever we may think about the 
truth of our beliefs? 

Professor Pratt’s important book’ on religious psychol- 
ogy suggests that the current attitude toward these ques- 
tions is wrong. In discussing prayer, he points out that 
“the subjective value of prayer is chiefly due to the 
belief that prayer has values which are not subjective. 
No, if the subjective value of prayer be all the value 
it has, we wise psychologists of religion had best keep 
the fact to ourselves, otherwise the game will soon be 
up and we shall have no religion left to psychologize 
about. We shall have killed the goose that laid our 
golden egg.” What is true of prayer would appear to 
be equally true of our belief in God and the cosmic for- 
tune of values; if we believe that our beliefs are not 
true, it is futile to pretend that we believe at all. Re- 
ligion would then become a silly game of psychological 
self-deception. If we are to have any religion at all, it 
must at least seem to us to be more than a comforting 
fiction. If we are to retain the human values of religion, 





‘The Religious Consciousness (New York: The Macmillan Com- 
pany, 1920). The passage in the text is quoted from p. 336. 


HUMAN VALUES 101 


it is only on condition that we see a reference in them to 
something that is not merely human and that is true no 
matter what we think. The subject of our next chapter 


will, therefore, be the more-than-human yalues of 
religion. 


CHAPTER V 


THE MORE-THAN-HUMAN VALUES OF 
RELIGION 


1. THE PROBLEM OF THE CHAPTER 


THE preceding chapter attempted to show that reli- 
gion gives to the common life some of its choicest and 
loftiest values; but that a religion need not be “true” in 
order to be valuable. Myth, symbol, and doctrine have 
inspired and strengthened life; they may often enough 
be recognized as self-contradictory or impossible. What 
religion has not saints, heroes, martyrs, and miracles 
to its credit? It would, then, almost seem that if it is 
to function successfully, a religion does not need to be 
true; it needs only to be believed. But at the conclusion 
of the last chapter there persisted the thought that the 
religion to retain its power must be believed, and be 
believed to be true. 

What belief can sustain life if it is known to be 
untrue? Can faith and unfaith be equal powers? 
Water-tight compartments are, indeed, psychologically 
possible, but within the religious compartment, at least, 
one must play fair with oneself; and if one is trying 
to make a unity of one’s total life, how much the more 
must one’s religion be examined in the clear light of 
every day, and all partitions broken down! What we 
have called apparent value will not suffice for religion. 
There must be true value if religion is to save its self- 
respect. The other interests of life—intellectual and 
moral—as well as the religious interest itself, agree in 
demanding that religious belief mean what it says or 
say nothing. 

102 


MORE-THAN-HUMAN VALUES 103 


Now, if it does mean what it says, it asserts that the 
human values of religion are largely dependent on a 
source that is more than human, on which man’s life 
feeds and from which it derives its value and glory. It 
speaks of a transcendent world; that is, of a realm which 
is not merely the human thoughts and feelings and voli- 
tions that man experiences when he is religious, but is 
superhuman, cosmic, and eternal. When the great reli- 
gious personalities have named the name of God they 
have always meant a Being who, however intimately he 
affects their experience, is independently real. 

Now, as soon as one begins to talk about the reality 
of God, or says anything about “superhuman beings” or 
“the cosmic fortune of values,” factors which are essen- 
tial to the very definition of religion, so soon one is 
launched on a sea of troubles. Rocks, reefs, tidal waves, 
and typhoons beset us behind and before. Religion is 
a blessing to life, it appears; but theology and meta- 
physics are abstract, difficult, never-ending, and some- 
times in their outcome skeptical and destructive of 
religious belief; they seem to be a curse. 

Here, then, is the problem of this chapter: Is it pos- 
sible to retain the human values of religion without the 
confusion and difficulty attendant on what we call the 
more-than-human values, or are these more-than-human 
values worth so much that they must be retained if 
religion is to survive? Or, stating it differently, can 
we give a complete account of what religious values 
mean merely in terms of our psychological life, our 
actual and possible immediate experience, or does the 
meaning of our religious experience depend on our rela- 
tion to a real order which is more and other than our 
human life? If we hold that religion is merely sub- 
jective, we have been bravely freed of the puzzles of 
metaphysics and the dogmas of theology. But have we 


104 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


thrown the child out with the bath? Would it be better 
for religion to keep her faith in objective and eternal 
values, and accept with composure her ancient task of 
negotiating peace with the intriguing diplomats of 
science and philosophy? 

Stating the problem in terms of current thought, it 
would read: Is the objective reference of religious faith 
important and fundamental to religion, or is it a make- 
shift which biological and social forces have devised in 
order to protect the sensitive life of the merely human 
values? The aim of the present discussion is to call 
attention to the importance of this problem and to dis- 
cuss certain of its aspects. 


2. POSITIVISM AND RELIGIOUS VALUES 


The problem which has thus been stated is one that 
occupies a very prominent place in recent discussion. 
Speaking broadly, we may say that there are two pos- 
sible attitudes that are to be taken by those who 
acknowledge the value of religion: they are, the posi- 
tivistic’ and the metaphysical. The positivistic attitude 
holds that the meaning of religion relates wholly to 
immediate experiences of human beings, and to nothing 
else; the metaphysical attitude holds that religion is a 
relation of our experience to what is truly real and 
truly valuable, and that the full value of religious expe- 
rience is grasped only where this relation is recognized. 
The positivistic view regards God and all objects of 
religious faith as wholly immanent in human life, and 
as having no other existence than as guiding principles 
of human life; the metaphysical view regards the 
religious objects and values as related to human life but 





*The term. “positivism” is used in this chapter to describe a general 
tendency in current thought. No one “school” is exclusively re- 
ferred to, 


MORE-THAN-HUMAN VALUES 105 


as having also a cosmic, transcendent, and eternal exist- 
ence. For positivism the God idea is only a symbol for 
certain facts of human experience; for religious meta- 
physics God is the real power controlling the universe 
and conserving its values. 

The opposition between these two points of view has 
been made very clear in much recent discussion. The 
positivistic tradition has been carried on since Comte 
by many writers. The late sociologist, Durkheim, is per- 
haps the most prominent and prolific writer of this 
school. He regards religion as wholly a social phenome- 
non, a fact of group life. He would admit that religious 
ideas seem to be transcendent, and in a sense really are, 
for they point beyond the individual to the group. But 
they do not point beyond the group. God is a name for 
tribal or racial or world-wide human consciousness. 
Immortality symbolizes the value of the group; the 
individual may perish, the group remains. Worship, 
ritual, prayer, mysticism—all that religion means as an 
experience or an institution is but a parable of the 
authority of the group over the individual or of the 
devotion of the individual to the group. 

This positivistic temper is very widespread and affects 
the religious views of many who in other respects differ 
widely from each other. A few instances will suffice to 
illustrate the point. Roy Wood Sellars has written of 
The Neat Step in Religion which is to be the restricting 
of religion to “loyalty to the values of life” and the 
elimination of all supernaturalism, such as is involved 
in belief in God and personal immortality. G. Stanley 
Hall’s book Morale, the Supreme Standard of Life and 
Conduct makes life entirely a matter of “superhygiene’” ; 
the goal of life is “the maximum of vitality, life abound- 
ing, getting and keeping in the very center of the current 
of creative evolution, and minimizing, destroying, or 


106 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


avoiding all checks, arrests, and inhibitions to it.”? In 
the chapter on “Morale and Religion” Hall pokes fun at 
the liberal Christianity which “clings tenaciously to the 
dogma of a personal objective God and individual immor- 
tality”; he urges “the substitution everywhere of imma- 
nence for transcendence,” and seeks to account for all 
religious ideas in terms of subjective human needs. 

Mr. Geiger, author of the monograph, Some Religious 
Implications of Pragmatism regards theology as “a 
Science of social values,” and expresses his meaning 
clearly in the following paragraph: 


When theology acts on the positivistic cue furnished by 
the natural sciences; when it leaves off following the will- 
o’-the-wisp of “design” and “special creation” and “provi- 
dence” and “attributes”; when it assumes once for all the 
reality of its subject matter as embodied in practical, con- 
crete experience and concerns itself with constructing such 
a set of intellectual statements about this subject matter as 
will facilitate its control, we may expect the content of the 
divine to begin to assume an empirical and practical charac- 
ter approaching in definiteness and fruitfulness the great 
conceptions wrought out by the natural sciences.? 


Religion, for such a view, is primarily an instrument of 
social control, not a relation to superhuman reality. 
This American pragmatism is even more extreme than 
the view of Hans Vaihinger, who, in Die Philosophie des 
Als-Ob,* asserts that all our metaphysical ideas are 
fictions, but that we are bound to act as if they were 
true. In Vaihinger’s view there is still the influence of 
the metaphysical; he would have us behave as if God 
were really transcendent, while the thoroughgoing posi- 


"New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1920, p. 1. 

‘University of Chicago Press, 1919, p. 38. 

‘Tr. in the International Library of Psychology, Philosophy, and 
Scientific Method, published by Harcourt, Brace and Company, New 
York. 


MORE-THAN-HUMAN VALUES 107 


tivism of the age sees no value even in the belief in a 
more-than-human. The closer we confine ourselves to 
humanity and its needs, say those who hold to this idea, 
the better off we are. We need social control: we do 
not need cosmic support. 

Many voices to-day thus join in the positivistic chorus, 
which sings “Glory to man in the highest,” and sees in 
religion a purely human undertaking, humanly initiated 
and humanly consummated. Thus religion avoids scho- 
lastic theology, joins hands with empirical sciences, and 
also (not the least of blessings) becomes quite demo- 
cratic. For it overthrows God the king, and does not 
dally long with the fancy of God as president. Presi- 
dent and candidates are so numerous, and are so incal- 
culable in their behavior that a presidential Deity might 
be even more arbitrary and confusing than a regal one. 
The truly democratic residuum is the apotheosis of soci- 
ety, the deification of the general will. This has come 
to pass in many quarters, literary, philosophical, and 
sociological, ever since Comte. Humanity is the only 
Supreme Being worth mentioning. 


3. METAPHYSICS AND RELIGIOUS VALUES 


The positivistic current, however, is not the only vocal 
philosophy of the present. The belief that religion is 
essentially metaphysical, and its values more-than- 
human, is held by many of its thoughtful interpreters. 
A few illustrations will suffice to point out the ten- 
dency. Eucken, for example, is always contrasting the 
merely human, the pettily human, with the Spiritual 
Life which comes from without into human life and 
ennobles it with the eternal values of truth and good- 
ness and religion. Windelband finds the very essence 
of religion in its reference to a reality which is beyond 
experience, beyond this world of sense; so that he 


108 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


regards Comte’s religion of humanity as a mere cari- 
cature of religion. Hocking remarks,® “Religion would 
vanish if the whole tale of its value were shifted to the 
sphere of human affairs.” G. P. Adams, in his Idealism 
and the Modern Age, pleads for a Platonism which 
makes the values of our human world depend on our 
apprehension of superhuman values. Pratt’s Religious 
Consciousness (mentioned in the previous chapter) 
points out that it is bad psychology to confine ourselves 
to the merely pragmatic factors in the God-idea (as we 
have been doing) because “it neglects altogether certain 
real elements in the religious consciousness, whether 
found in philosopher, priest, or humble worshiper—men 
who through all the ages have truly meant by 
‘God’ something more than the idea of God, something 
genuinely ‘transcendent’” (p. 209). Fitch’s Lyman 
Beecher Lectures on Preaching and Paganism argue, as 
against naturalism and humanism, for supernatural and 
superhuman sources of religious life. Rudolph Otto’s 
Idea of the Holy, the most important original contribu- 
tion to philosophy of religion in recent years, is based 
on the same thesis. Pringle-Pattison’s Idea of God, 
W. R. Sorley’s Moral Values and the Idea of God, 
A. C. Knudson’s Mendenhall Lectures, Present Tenden- 
cies in Religious Thought, and R. A. Tsanoff’s The 
Problem of Immortality all hold to the objectivity of 
values. 


4. THE OBJECTIVE REFERENCE OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 


It is evident that if the positivistic interpretation be 
correct, we shall need a radical recasting both of our defi- 
nition of religion and of the practical expression of 
religious life. For it, religion is no relation to cosmic 
powers, no concern about the fate of values in the uni- 


‘The Meaning of God in Human Experience, p. 9. 


MORE-THAN-HUMAN VALUES 109 


verse, but merely a human manipulation of certain psy- 
chological and sociological laws in the interests of 
greater social efficiency. To face the issues thus raised 
is imperative, is essential to the health of religion in the 
modern world. 

If we examine the facts with this problem in mind, 
we are struck first of all by one outstanding and univer- 
sal trait that speaks against positivism, namely, the fact 
that religious life is objective. By this I mean two 
things. First, religion reaches out for a power beyond 
the human person. In this it is like magic. Secondly, 
it is not centered in self, nor is it intentionally a mere 
desire for my pleasure or my success. In this it differs 
from magic, for magic always aims to subject the mys- 
terious powers to human desires, whereas religion, espe- 
cially in its higher forms, tends to regard the relation 
of the human to the divine, and the authority of the 
divine in human life, as in some sense an end in itself, 
saying to many of our desires, “Peace, be still.” It does 
not merely use God; it worships him. 

Hence, not all devotion is religion; not even all devo- 
tion to one’s best self and highest aspirations. Or, 
rather, such devotion is religious only when those aspira- 
tions are regarded as points of contact with the eternal. 
To view the task of human life as the highest possible 
organization and realization of our instincts is not a 
religious standpoint unless those instincts are also 
viewed as, in some sense, an experience of God. The 
task which religion imposes on man under the actual 
conditions of life is that of finding in himself the clew 
to something more than himself. In this, religion is like 
every other experience of life. Just as sense impressions 
in us give us clews to the objective order of nature, so 
do religious experiences in us give us clews to the objec- 
tive order of value in a reality deeper than nature. 


110 _ RELIGIOUS VALUES 


Similarly, Sorley argues in his Moral Values and the 
Idea of God that our moral experiences give us clews 
to an objective and law-abiding value-order, which, in 
turn, can be real only in and for a personal God. In 
each case the ground for our belief in the existence of 
an objective order is the fact that there is experience 
given which is capable of being organized into a coherent 
system, in some sense common to all and accessible to 
all. The appeal is to reason. 

It is not the present purpose to try to press the truth 
of such argumentation. Ours is now the humbler task 
of pointing out that religion, as James has said, holds 
to “The Reality of the Unseen.” “It is,’ he says, “as 
if there were in the human consciousness a sense of 
reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of 
what we may call ‘something there’ more deep and more 
general than any of the special and particular ‘senses.’ ””® 
It has a vision of a more-than-human. 

A positivistic critic would, however, find little satis- 
faction in this asserted objectivity of religion. It would 
appear to him to be an unsubstantial speculation, unveri- 
fiable, and hence untrue and worthless. At most he 
would see in this assertion a symbol for certain social 
needs and interests. We shall therefore now under- 
take to meet such a critic on his own ground, and inquire 
whether this more-than-human value in religion is intrin- 
sically worthless, or whether it is the necessary source 
of all true value. If the positivist is wrong, man deeply 
needs the transcendent. 

We shall first discuss religious objectivity as only 
one manifestation of the objective reference of all human 
experience; we shall then consider the relation of the 
more-than-human values to the human desire for cer- 





‘The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Longmans, 
Green & Co., 1905), p. 58. 


MORE-THAN-HUMAN VALUES 111 


tainty; we shall then seek to show in some detail how a 
few specific religious experiences attain objectivity and 
find satisfaction in morethan-human values; and, 
finally, we shall consider objections that positivists 
might urge against the metaphysical position. 


5. OBJECTIVE REFERENCE OF ALL EXPERIENCE 


Objective reference is one of the most universal traits 
of human experience. In every elementary philosoph- 
ical discussion there emerges a semimythical figure 
known as a solipsist, who is supposed to hold the belief 
that he and his ideas—himself alone—are the whole 
world. But with such a figure no one else could com- 
municate, nor could he express his views to anyone else. 
Perhaps because it would make books and lectures even 
more futile than they are now, every philosopher makes 
haste to point out that he repudiates solipsism. The 
most vicious attack that can be made on a philosophical 
opponent is to argue that his position is, in its logical 
consequences, solipsistic. 

But it must be admitted that every logical refutation 
of solipsism reaches its goal by assuming at the very 
start that there are other persons and an objective order. 
Without this assumption we can make no sense out of 
our experience. We cannot deduce by any “linear infer- 
ence,” but we must assume, or presuppose, or perceive 
that there is something real other than ourselves. We 
see that our life belongs to a larger whole. Reason itself 
implies otherness, reality, objectivity; the notion of a 
world in which I am alone, without others, or in which 
we all are alone without something other-than-human is 
incompatible with the very meaning of reasonableness. 
In the words of W. E. Hocking, “Some passion for 
objectivity, for reality, for substance, quite prior to other 
passions, there is at the bottom of all idea; a passion 


112 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


not wholly of an unreligious nature, not wholly un-akin 
to the love of God.’’’ 

In thus emphasizing the general fact of objective 
reference as a support of metaphysics and a refutation 
of positivism, I am not overlooking the treatment of 
objectivity by positivists, nor am I asserting that the 
whole problem of religious values is solved by pro- 
nouncing the shibboleth “objective and metaphysical.” | 
On the contrary, it is clear that objectivity is the prob- 
lem, not its solution. 

Positivists and metaphysicians have alike been con- 
cerned to interpret objectivity. Positivists have dwelt 
on the truth that the only world we have is the expe- 
rienced world; that all objectivity must be found in the 
interpretation of that world; that the unexperienceable 
belongs in the outer darkness with all Dinge an sich. The 
transcendent is unthinkable; and if the objectivity of 
religious values mean this, away with it! Thus cur- 
rent pragmatism and new realism, with all their differ- 
ences, join in a common empiricism. 

The metaphysicians, while willing to admit that our 
only business as thinkers is to make the world of expe- 
rience intelligible, have frequently replied that there is 
an ineradicable dualism in the cognitive relation. The 
object to which perception or thought refers is never 
identical with my act of perceiving or thinking. Even 
in a world wholly made up of experience stuff there 
would be a transcendent reference in every cognitive act. 
When now I refer to my own past or future, I tran- 
scend my present psychical state by what Lovejoy calls 
intertemporal cognition. When I assert that another 
person is suffering the pangs of despised love, I mean 
that there is a fact in the universe that transcends my 





"The Meaning of God in Human Experience, p. 123. 


MORE-THAN-HUMAN VALUES 113 


psychical state, and that can never be as it is in itself 
(namely, for the forlorn one) a fact in my experience. 

The metaphysician (if he be an ontological personal- 
ist and a theist) might therefore say to the positivist: 
I grant that everything to which my thought refers is of 
the nature of experience (provided the term be allowed 
to mean all that personal consciousness includes), but 
at the same time I assert that my object is other than 
my experience. I assert that knowledge implies tran- 
scendence, and also that reason forces on us the assump- 
tion that my thought can successfully describe that to 
which it refers. But it does not merely refer to its own 
past or future or to other persons; it also refers to the 
world of nature and to God. If other persons have an 
existence (however psychical) that is not identical with 
my “experience of” them; and if nature is not my or 
our experience of it, may not the Supreme Object of 
religious valuation likewise have an existence that is 
other than “our” experiences, however noble, social, and 
morally useful our experiences may be? 

If philosophy of religion is to advance, there must 
be a clear definition of such terms as experience, veri- 
fiability (what crimes have been committed in thy 
name!), objective reference, objectivity, and the like. 
The present writer desires to call attention to the recent 
cooperative volume of H'ssays on Critical Realism, edited 
by Professor Durant Drake. In this volume current 
epistemological doctrines, pragmatic and neo-realistic 
alike, are challenged, and the problems stated in a fash- 
ion that may turn out to be of significance for philosophy 
of religion, and in particular for the problem presented 
in the present chapter.® 

Objective reference, we may conclude, is the essence 





See also E. S. Brightman, An Introduction to Philosophy, 
Chap. ITI. 


114 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


of all knowledge; science, philosophy, and religion all 
point beyond themselves to a reality which they describe. 
Man always finds himself by finding something else. 
Pure subjectivity seems to be impossible. What we call 
subjectivity is the domination of life by false or partial 
standards of value and the selection of some aspects of 
the objective order to the exclusion of others which are 
more complete and more.worthy. The most normal life 
is the life that is losing or at least forgetting itself in 
noble causes and is reaching out through these causes 
to worthy contacts with other persons and the cosmic 
order. 

It appears that the center of gravity of the positivistic 
account of religion is subjective, even though social; for 
a social solipsism leaves humanity in the same incom- 
pletely rational state as an individualistic solipsism 
leaves the human unit. On the other hand, the center of 
gravity of the metaphysical account of religion lies 
always beyond the self. One who thinks objectively 
about religion will find in religious values an experience 
which points beyond the moment to other moments, 
beyond all moments of the self to other selves, beyond all 
society to nature, and through nature to God. Com- 
munion with the object to which our religious valua- 
tions refer will thus bring with it also an expansion of 
the personal consciousness and will satisfy its need for 
growth. The apparently abstract epistemological theory 
of objective reference thus turns out to lie at the very 
heart of the religious experience. 


6. OBJECTIVITY AND CERTAINTY 


Every human being desires certainty. Yet the very 
mention of this desire seems at first to be a mockery. 
Granted that we desire certainty, is not the only cer- 
tainty this, that nothing is certain? Of what element 


MORE-THAN-HUMAN VALUES 115 


in human life, save perhaps the empty forms of logical 
thinking, can we say that it is demonstrably final, 
beyond all need of revision, incapable of being assailed 
by time and second thought? There are indeed many 
beliefs of which we are wholly convinced, to which we 
have committed our lives, of which we are, as we say, 
morally certain. But when we consider the limitations 
of the human mind, the ever-changing stream of personal 
consciousness, the flood of new experiences constantly 
pouring in, how can we attribute absolute logical cer- 
tainty to any of the beliefs we live by or build our civili- 
zation on? 

Nevertheless, religious faith takes the form of the 
most assured certainty. This certainty too often leads 
to the spirit of intolerant dogmatism which manifests 
itself as unpleasantly among persons who boast of their 
progressivism as among the static conservatives. Reli- 
gious certainty® does not mean that any religious dogmas 
are absolutely proved by logical reasoning. It means, 
rather, that religion is a committing of the life to what 
is absolutely real, to a cause that cannot fail. 

To no human belief or symbol can there attach the 
same sort of absoluteness that belongs to the being of 
God. The legitimate certainty which religion affords to 
the believer is the consciousness that, though his creed 
may not perfectly apprehend the Universal Mystery, yet 
that more-than-human reality which his faith is seeking 
and in relation to which his religious life is lived is the 
actual Rock of Ages. It is the real God rather than 
flawless formularies or absolute philosophies that men 
need as the firm foundation of their assurance in life. 
To think out the formularies and philosophies is an 
essential part of the human task, but faith in them is 





°*See F. J. McConnell’s instructive book by that title (The Abing- 
don Press). 


116 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


not religion. Faith in dogma and faith in God are not 
equivalent attitudes. 


7. How RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE FINDS OBJECTIVITY 


Leaving these more general considerations, we now 
inquire how specific aspects of religious experience 
actually seek to attain these more-than-human values. 
First of all, the reader of the previous chapter will recall 
that the facts there discussed with reference to their 
human value were or involved belief in some superhuman 
being and that they were all concerned with the cosmic 
fortune of values. From the analyses there made it 
would appear already to follow that the human values 
of religion depend on the values that are more-than- 
human; what we prize for our own life is attainable 
only through something divinely precious which comes 
from beyond our life. In order to test and clarify this 
idea, let us examine a few concrete instances. 

One of the most characteristic experiences of religion 
is communion with the Divine. The sense of intimate 
personal relationship between the soul and God is both 
present in the most spiritual moments of the highest 
type of religion and even in one of its most primitive 
forms, namely, totemism. When the totem animal is 
slain and eaten in primitive rites, divine power enters 
into human life. When the psalmist says, 


“Hear my prayer, O Jehovah, 

And let my cry come unto thee. 

Hide not thy face from me in the day of my distress: 
Incline thine ear unto me; 

In the day when I shall call answer me speedily,” 


he is calling to God. He seeks communion with One who 
is able to respond. “My heart and my flesh cry out 
unto the living God.” The priestly writer tells how 


MORE-THAN-HUMAN VALUES gizhy 


Moses communed with God on Mount Sinai, but “Moses 
knew not that the skin of his face shone by reason of 
his speaking with him.” 

Can one fairly interpret such records positivistically? 
Is the social symbolism of the totem animal a perfect 
clew to the highest spiritual values? Can one regard 
the narrative of the mystical experience of Moses as no 
more than the self-exaltation of the priestly caste in 
ancient Israel? The narrative describes a man who 
was so absorbed in God that he paid no attention to 
his own symptoms; here is a genuine consciousness of 
God that is more than subjective and more than social. 

Indeed, it is hard to see how one can read these or 
countless other authentic documents of the religious life 
without being convinced that Pratt is speaking of a 
central fact in religion when he says that it “holds out 
to the desperate man who has lost all hope in him- 
Self or in human help, the promise of supernatural and 
unfailing assistance.”'° Communion, however, means 
more than the hope of such assistance. It means com- 
panionship with an ever-present One who is the source 
of all companionship and gives sacred meaning to every 
human association. It means sometimes intellectual 
contemplation, sometimes mystical worship and adora- 
tion.** But in every case this companionship means 
that the human life is reaching out beyond itself to 
another life where all that is good has its home. Reli- 
gious communion with the divine means, at its lowest 
valuation, that man longs to be better than he is; fully 
appreciated, it is seen to mean far more, to carry with it 
a sense of man’s incapacity by himself and of his need 
of God. 

In our day religious experience very commonly takes 





“The Religious Consciousness, p. 158. 
“4See Chap. VII of this book. 


118 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


a social form. Men find God by serving their neigh- 
bors. As we have seen, the positivists go so far as to 
find God nowhere else than in human relations; human- 
ity, or the love of humanity, in their opinion, is God. 
But it is not entirely easy to see the practical superiority 
that is claimed for the positivistic over the metaphysical 
way of interpreting religious values. Religion in its 
genuine historical forms always regards the social prob- 
lem as in part metaphysical, and never regards the 
social as ultimate. The dependence of all human beings 
on God is metaphysical. It means that human society 
is not the highest object of man’s devotion. 

On the other hand, this metaphysical belief reinter- 
prets social experience. It makes the relations of human 
beings to each other not less but more intimate. The 
faith that the ideals of the moral and religious order 
are more real and objective than the rocks and the light- 
nings is the most cogent of all reasons for seeking to 
make those ideals real in human life. 

Religion has too often fallen short of manfully carry- 
ing out the task her ideal imposes on her. She has been 
guilty of ecstatic visions that have lulled the soul to 
blissful dreams of heaven instead of heeding the mes- 
sage of her own social prophets. She has at times 
fallen victim to an extreme other-worldliness which was 
quite satisfied to let slip opportunities for making this 
world what it ought to be. 

But it is a tragic misunderstanding to suppose that 
one must either choose religion and other-worldliness 
along with it or else reject religion and substitute for 
it a wholesome regard for the affairs of this world. The 
prayer of religion has always been for a union of the 
real and ideal, of this world and the other: “Thy will 
be done as in heaven so on earth.” The religious motive 
for service thus contains every factor that enters into 


MORE-THAN-HUMAN VALUES 119 


the humanitarian and adds to it supernatural sanctions 
and the guidance of a supernatural goal. The cup of 
cold water “in my name” is different from a mere cup 
of cold water. If the meaning of “in my name” be appre- 
ciated, the act of generosity is more likely to happen 
again and gives a more permanent benefit to the recip- 
ient. It unites the two persons concerned by an invisible 
and holy tie. In a human relationship the spiritual 
life that is expressed is at bottom the most significant, 
indeed, the only significant thing about it. In the 
human a more-than-human meaning is found. 

True it is that for the majority of human beings the 
economic and social conditions of life are such that this 
spiritually significant experience is almost entirely 
strangled. All the more reason that the spiritual values 
should be cherished as a sacred trust by all who can 
now appreciate them against the day for which all good 
men are working when every human being may partici- 
pate in them. If this be not faithfully done, there is 
no small danger that we may give ourselves so utterly 
to the improving of environmental conditions that the 
emancipated worker in the industrial democracy of the 
future may in reality be no better off than the wage- 
laborer of the present. True wealth lies always in the 
values of conscious experience. Where there is no vision 
the people perish as certainly as when they must make 
bricks without straw. Or, if the reader insists on the 
American Revisers’ version, “where there is no vision 
the people cast off restraint’”’,—an ominously appropriate 
warning to civilization that in the end social order and 
social progress depend on loyalty to moral and religious 
values. An age mainly interested in the instruments 
of readjustment too easily forgets the spiritual end of 
life. 

Let us take one more instance, namely, that of the 


120 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


belief in immortality. This belief is a peculiarly rich 
field for the positivist. To him it means only that the 
social influence of the individual is endless (immortality 
of influence), or that the group (such as the nation) or 
the group-mind is thought of as never dying (immortal- 
ity of the social mind), or that immortality is but a 
symbol for the permanence of the social values. Of 
these forms of positivistic interpretation the last is near- 
est to what religion has intended by its faith in immortal 
life. It has always been profoundly interested in man’s 
influence on his fellows and the preservation of the 
highest forms of historic life. But when it was speaking 
of these things, after all, it has not identified them 
with immortality. As was indicated in Chapter IV, 
faith in immortality is religion’s reply to the apparent 
destruction of all value by death, for religion cannot 
admit that what is truly worthful can perish. 

Religion, then, assuredly means to say that true social 
values are permanent. In this positivism is right. But 
what does positivism mean by permanent? It can mean 
only the preservation of values by the successive gener- 
ations of human society on this earth. This means, in 
the first place, that every human person is a means to 
the experience of value in other persons; every genera- 
tion a means to the experience of value in later genera- 
tions; that is, every human being is a means only, none 
is an end in himself. This view which seems so altruistic 
when first presented turns into a cynical denial of true 
value; it makes every generation a bonfire to warm the 
hands of the next, which in turn is fuel for its successor. 
The tragedy is that no one remains to be warmed without 
being destroyed; and add to this the probability that the 
whole bonfire itself will doubtless some day be extin- 
guished. Such permanence of values is no true perma- 
nence, As astronomical time goes, it is only a fraction 


MORE-THAN-HUMAN VALUES 121 


of a cosmic second. The positivist will probably reply 
that the average man’s watch is in the bondage of 
relativity and that cosmic time does not enter into his 
appointments. But is not the saying of Koheleth truer 
to the depths of man’s nature, that “he hath set eternity 
in his heart’? 

Shall we not, then, conclude that all of the positivistic 
accounts of immortality fall short of doing justice to the 
true religious function of that idea? Religion needs 
an objective conservation of objective values; hence only 
actual personal immortality will satisfy it. If it be 
argued, as some have done, that values may be conserved 
in some mysterious manner without the eternal life of 
human persons, religion would indeed in ber heart of 
hearts murmur, “Thy will be done.” But it is exceed- 
inly difficult to fathom what would be gained either 
for religion or for insight by forsaking a fairly intelli- 
gible view based on our actual experience that value 
is dependent on personality for an utterly blind faith 
which abandons contact with experience and hopes 
against reason and evidence. [Taith in immortality is 
the former; dreams of impersonal conservation of value 
are the latter. 

Everywhere, then, religion asserts itself to be more 
than a useful and comforting set of beliefs that will help 
the individual and society to function more efficiently. 
All creeds and faiths that have taken root in history 
point to some revelation of truth, of eternal, more-than- 
human values, by which the human is saved and glori- 
fied. Even early Buddhism, atheistic as it was, con- 
sisted in an utter devotion to objective values and truth. 
If the benefits of religion are to accrue to a human soul, 
that soul must have its face set toward Jerusalem and 
must view all things under the aspect of eternity. Our 
study thus far compels the conclusion that religion 


122 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


is essentially metaphysical and that Windelband was 
right in calling positivism a mere caricature of religion. 


8. POSITIVISTIC OBJECTIONS TO THE METAPHYSICAL 
INTERPRETATION OF RELIGIOUS VALUES 


In spite of the apparent cogency of our conclusions, it 
would not be fair to leave the matter thus. Hitherto 
we have been analyzing religion sympathetically with 
but little regard to critical objections. We shall now 
face the more important of the positivist’s objections and 
consider whether they are fatal to religion’s claim that 
her values are truly more-than-human. 

It should be borne in mind that the assertion of the 
metaphysical position does not imply that positivism is 
wholly wrong. There remains the truth that even false 
religious beliefs have been of great value to believers, and 
that there is some error in almost every human credo. 
It is also true that all religious beliefs have a social 
function and that many positivists are veritable prophets 
of the higher social values. Furthermore, an examina- 
tion of almost any positivistic argument will show that 
it is concerned with some genuine item of religious 
life. 

The metaphysical interpretation at which we have 
arrived has resulted from a study of the facts of religious 
experience. The familiar positivistic attack on the 
objectivity of value also grows out of an analysis of 
experience. To say that anything is of value (so this 
argument runs) is to say that man desires it or is 
interested in it. To be of value thus means to be 
desired; and the value of anything consists in its rela- 
tion to my consciousness of desire. To say that the 
kind act of another is of value to me is equivalent 
to saying that I like it or that it supplies some need 
of mine. The valuable is the satisfying. It may appear 


MORE-THAN-HUMAN VALUES 123 


that our standards of value often criticize and oppose 
our desires instead of fulfilling them. This, however, is 
due to the fact that we seek for the maximum satisfac- 
tion of desire; and an end in life which satisfies any 
large group of our desires will necessarily conflict with 
some of our less inclusive and more random interests. 
Such, in bare outline, are some of the traits of a theory 
of value like that defined by Perry in his Moral 
Economy." 

It is clear that, if this theory be correct, all values 
are subjective in the sense of being dependent on con- 
sciousness. If this were all that subjectivity meant, 
every sound psychologist would have to hold to subjec- 
tivism. It surely is true that value is, in some sense, 
what satisfies consciousness and that value has no mean- 
ing or existence apart from consciousness. An entity of 
which no one is conscious is of no value except as an 
object of possible consciousness. 

But we must go further. The problem assumes this 
form: Does the psychological truth of value-subjectivism 
in the sense defined compel the mind to accept metaphys- 
ical subjectivism? Because value is relative to conscious- 
ness, must we be positivists? It is startling to find a 
“panobjectivist” like Perry and some of his neo-realistic 
colleagues holding to a thoroughly subjectivistic theory 
of value, and joining hands with positivists. 

In all discussion of the objectivity of value, Plato’s 
figure hovers near. Plato, we remember, did not find 
any incompatibility between recognizing the presence of 
desire in the value-experience and believing in the tran- 
scendent and eternal Ideas. Indeed, even in the theory 
under discussion, it is obviously presupposed that there 





“For a fuller criticism of this view see E. S. Brightman, “Neo- 
realistic Theories of Value,’ in E. C. Wilm, Studies in Philosophy 
and Theology (New York: The Abingdon Press, 1922), pp. 22-64. 


124 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


is something in any valued object which is capable of 
satisfying the desire of the one who values it (if his 
value-judgment is a true one). We must test the posi- 
tivist’s theory by its adequacy to interpret experience. 
The chief actual experiences of intrinsic or immediate 
value with which every theory must deal are what we 
call truth, beauty, and goodness (leaving to one side 
religion, which is the point at issue). The critic of 
positivism will admit that all of these are objects of 
desire for the mind that is true to itself; but he will 
question whether the full meaning of the value of any 
of these objects is expressed when we c¢all it “the desired” 
or “that which satisfies desire.” Truth, for instance, is 
not merely the desired, but it is that which conforms 
to the ideal of complete logical coherence and thus 
furnishes insight into the nature of reality. Truth satis- 
fies, or ought to satisfy, but truth is not likely to be 
found if satisfaction is our prime aim. It is to be found 
only by acknowledging and acting on the laws of truth 
itself. When we do this we find a spiritual and ideal 
value in truth. 

Is it not, therefore, nearer to the facts of life to say 
that true satisfaction is what we experience as a by- 
product when we seek to obey the ideal laws of truth 
or beauty or goodness? If this be so, all our valua- 
tions imply some sort of objectivity of value, as truly as 
does religion. Positivism overlooks or inadequately 
explains this objective law, or imperative ideal, which 
assigns values a very different place in the seale than 
would desire taken as sole standard. The very loyalty 
to intellectual values by a man like Perry appears to 
illustrate and confirm this remark, as does the enthu- 
siasm for social progress among positivistic pragmatists. 
Through ideals we discover reality. 

Is there not, however, some hope of a synthesis 


MORE-THAN-HUMAN VALUES 125 


between the truth in the positivistic theory of value and 
the metaphysical claims of religion? Positivism is 
emphasizing one of the dearest truths of religion, 
namely, that all value is personal and that apart from 
personality there is no value. Yet, although positivism 
says, “No value apart from relation to consciousness,” 
religion says, “No value in my domain which does not 
refer to other-than-human consciousness.” Is this an 
irreconcilable difference? It is, if positivism insists on 
its exclusive right and religion on its; there then arises 
a hopeless conflict between immanence and transcend- 
ence. But if each is willing to think further, both may 
find in personal idealism a synthesis that overcomes the 
conflict. | 

All values, such idealism would say to positivism, 
are indeed satisfactions of some consciousness, but they 
are more than satisfactions; they are laws, standards, 
ideals, norms, which prescribe to consciousness how it 
ought to experience, what ought to satisfy it. The 
sollen, as Rickert would call it, is fundamental. To 
religion, idealism would say that it is true that all 
human values point to a more-than-human. But what is 
the more-than-human? For idealism it is a realm of 
consciousness, a person. Only for persons can ideals, 
obligations, values, be real. In One Supreme Person, 
God, is the objective reality of those values which truly 
satisfy human life. If the nature of this Person is love, 
as Christianity believes, the Divine Person is ever draw- 
ing human persons to himself and giving to them their 
highest satisfaction only in communion with his will 
and its standards. Such a view, recognizing the thor- 
oughly personal status of values, appears to do fuller 
justice to the facts of religious experience than does posi- 
tivism, while at the same time it agrees with the psy- 
chological insight in the positivistic position. So much, 


126 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


then, for the positivistic objection that value is always 
dependent on desire. 

A different objection to the recognition of more-than- 
human values may be urged. It may be said that 
objective values are meaningless fictions of the specula- 
tive imagination. Who has ever formed a clear concep- 
tion of what is meant by the Platonic Idea of justice, 
for instance, as an eternally existing somewhat? The 
universals are to be found not apart from, but in, the 
particulars, says Aristotle; and nominalists and prag- 
matists have protested against abstract general ideas in 
favor of the concrete and particular. 

But to cite this sort of objection as valid against all 
belief in the objectivity of value is not fair. Our obser- 
vations in the foregoing paragraph have sought to make 
clear that the religious interest in objective value 
is not an interest in some quaint thing like an 
existing universal or a mysterious value-entity. It is 
merely an interest in finding an origin for our religious 
experiences in a real order beyond ourselves. Faith in 
a personal God supplies this need in a fashion at once 
more intelligible and more adequate to express the 
religious relation to God than would belief in any 
impersonal objective values. The more-than-human, 
then, is not a less-than-personal. 

But a great issue like that between the interpreta- 
tions of religion as merely human and as more-than- 
human is not settled by considering one or two argu- 
ments. If the positivist is silenced in one quarter, he 
returns to do battle in another. He may grant that it 
is possible, as we have been holding, that there is a 
divine order of value with purposes and standards for 
finite life. But he will insist that it profits little to 
suppose the existence of such an order if we are incap- 
able of knowing its nature and laws. History is indeed 


MORE-THAN-HUMAN VALUES 127 


full of assertions of the possession of such knowledge 
by religious believers. But dogmas collide with one 
another, pretended revelations are mutually contradic- 
tory, conceptions of God and his will are in a perpetual 
flux.’* The confusion and conflict are real facts. They 
make it impossible to deny that there is a very large 
element in all our religious conceptions which is merely 
human and subjective. 

But is the positivist’s case here conclusive against the 
objectivity of religious values? If so, it is equally con- 
clusive in principle against all truth whatsoever. In 
what realm are there not differences of opinion, imper- 
fect and more or less contradictory apprehensions of 
truth, development in our grasp of it? Further, in 
what realm is it not true that our only rescue from 
chaos is in ideals—ideals always partially and incom- 
pletely realized? Only an ideal of a cosmos, a world of 
law and order, enables us to distinguish our fancies and 
imaginations from the perceptions of real objects. Yet 
the ideal of a perfectly ordered world, in which all rela- 
tions and causes are transparently clear, has not yet 
been attained by science. It remains precisely an ideal, 
by which we test our fragmentary knowledge, recognize 
unsolved problems, and gradually build up an increas- 
ingly clear grasp on the real world of nature. 

Now, the function of ideals in religion may be similar 
to their function in science. The ideal of objective 
religious value is the principle by which the mind tests 
and seeks to organize its religious experience. Without 
the acknowledgment of this ideal religious values are 





“The lack of definiteness in thought about God is illustrated by 
a book like C. A. Beckwith’s The Idea of God (New York: The Mac- 
millan Company, 1922), and even more vividly in the article by 
A. E. Haydon, called “The Quest for God,’ and published in Jour. 
Fel., 3 (1923), pp. 590-597. 


128 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


Subjective chaos. If it be acknowledged, the facts of 
religious history and psychology are seen to haye a com- 
mon goal. They acquire a unity and direction otherwise 
lacking to them. 

We may then fairly reply to the positivist that, as far 
as imperfection, contradiction, and change are con- 
cerned, knowledge of religious values is in the same sort 
of logical boat with our knowledge of nature. No human 
knowledge is perfect; but our imperfect knowledge pre- 
supposes and is judged by an ideal perfection. Religious 
knowledge, then, is subject to no uniquely fatal dis- 
ability in this respect. 

Another objection, in some respects more serious than 
the foregoing, may still be urged against the belief in 
the objectivity of values. However plausible the case 
for more-than-human values may be, the positivist insists 
that it must be merely plausible and fallacious, in view 
of the fact that values are so patently a creation of the 
human mind. If this statement appear too sweeping, 
who can deny that some values, at least, are products of 
creative imagination? This difficulty is well stated by 
Mr. C. C. J. Webb, himself a believer in objective values. 
He says “that the artist is indeed ready to use the con- 
ception [of Divine Personality] for his own purposes, 
if it be expressly recognized as a product of imagination 
and as free for him to manipulate as he will; but, if it 
be granted an independent and objective validity, he 
is apt to regard it as suggestive of a tyrannical Power, 
cruelly or fiendishly denying its rights to that impulse 
of self-expression which is his very life and holier to him 
than any repressive law can possibly be.”’!4 Thus, if 





*C. C. J. Webb, Divine Personality and Human Life (London: 
Allen, 1920), p. 91. For the problem involved, consider again the 
subject matter of our Chapter II, “The Moral Basis of Religious 
Values,” in which the principle of autonomy is emphasized. 


MORE-THAN-HUMAN VALUES 129 


art be a value, then value-experience is no mere reading 
off of an objective order. It is the creation of a realm 
of spiritual beauty in and by human life. This appears 
true of all forms of creative art, and not of art only, but 
also of other values, such as friendship and invention ; 
indeed, it is hard to conceive of any values from which 
it would be entirely absent. Personality is creative.'° 
Now, it appears that the objectivity of values excludes 
human creativity and genuine novel values. Further, 
the belief in value-objectivity has, or seems to have, prac- 
tical consequences that are very serious. The pragmatic 
meaning of belief in the objectivity of values is said to 
be a consecration of the status quo. This sort of consid- 
eration greatly impresses a man like John Dewey. He, 
and others like-minded, reason that the believer in 
religion as an expression of transcendent, eternal values 
not unnaturally prizes the attitudes toward God which 
function in his own experience. The next step is to 
assess his attitudes and beliefs and those of the group 
to which he belongs as the supremely worthful religion, 
than which no better can be conceived. Then he identi- 
fies these beliefs with the eternal will of God and the 
structure of the universe. Taken with bitter seriousness 
such a view inevitably results in stagnation and dog- 
matism. If one has the eternal truth, what more is 
there to learn? It is no wonder that this sort of 
thing calls forth the socialistic battle-cry, “Drive the 
gods from heaven and capitalism from the earth!” 
Thus our metaphysical theory is charged with the two- 
fold defect of excluding creativity and of dooming life 
to stagnation. That some who hold to the objectivity 
of values suffer from this defect cannot be denied. 
Illiberal dogmatism too often accompanies religious life. 
But when this is said it by no means follows that the 


See Chapter IX, “Worship as Creativity.” 


130 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


main criticism is valid. If our suggested idealism be 
true, the objectivity of a value does not reside in the 
decrees of any Council or the dogmas of any church. 

Decrees and dogmas are but attempts to describe the 
eternal truth; yet that truth must be more than any 
human account of it. To say that value is objective, 
then, means more and better truth than any human 
creed has expressed. It means that the Supreme Per- 
son imposes on himself ideals, standards, obligations, 
which ought to be the laws and satisfactions of every 
finite person. But these ideals are laws of personal 
consciousness, hence, laws of creative life. If the more- 
than-human values are of such sort, the very principle 
of free creativity, which seemed to contradict objective 
value, may be very near to the heart of what is most 
objective. Only an impersonal or a static conception of 
value would exclude such creativity from being part of 
the order of what is objectively worthful. Indeed, if 
the universe is morally constructed, freedom in some 
sense must be a genuine and precious fact, precious not 
merely because it is humanly desirable, but also because 
it points to an objective law of the very structure of the 
universe—the law that persons ought to create. If 
the real laws of being are imperatives challenging the 
world of finite persons to be a perpetual exploration 
of the infinite, based on faith in its reasonable goodness, 
it is clear that petrification of any cross-section of the 
temporal order can occur only when the real nature of 
values is misunderstood. 

The attentive positivistic reader of Chapter IV will, 
however, be able to summon up a further objection. In 
that chapter attention was called to the noteworthy fact 
that the human value of religion apparently does not 
depend on the truth of the beliefs implied by the values. 
A belief, we there found, does not have to be true in order 


MORE-THAN-HUMAN VALUES 131 


to be useful; it has only to be believed firmly enough. 
Signs and wonders are performed by all religions; all 
religions contain some elements which enhance the value 
of life. Therefore, concludes the positivist, all are sub- 
jective. 

The fact to which he calls attention is perplexing, but 
it does not lead so obviously to the positivistic conclu- 
sion as the uncritical observer might suppose. Per- 
haps our metaphysical hypothesis can explain it more 
adequately than can positivism. Let us suppose that 
personalistic theism, which we take to be the most 
rational interpretation of religious values, is really as 
true as it seems to be. Then, there is a reasonable 
account of the value of erroneous beliefs. First of all, it 
is, to say the least, edifying to consider that the power 
of God can and does work helpfully with men who err 
in their judgments about him. There would be no hope 
of man’s ever finding God if beliefs with an admixture 
of error could not lead the soul to God. But this edify- 
ing reflection does not carry us very far. More signifi- 
cant is the fact that in the most diverse religious beliefs 
there are forces which lead toward truth and reality, 
even though they may be imperfectly understood by the 
believer. 

In other words, personalism is a functional or teleo- 
logical philosophy of the history of religion. Such an 
interpretation sheds a flood of light on the unity of 
function underlying the diversity of beliefs. This func- 
tion transcends all biological or social adjustments; it 
consists in the fact that the most contradictory religious 
beliefs may lead the race gradually nearer to God. Any 
belief may, to some degree, fulfill this function pro- 
vided there is in it a spirit which the Eternal Spirit 
recognizes as aspiration toward true value. Hence, the 
ultimate source of power in religious belief is ontologi- 


132 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


cal, not merely psychological; or, rather, let us say, there 
can be no psychological or social fact without ontological 
roots. 

Erroneous beliefs are therefore of human value, in 
the last analysis, not merely because they are intense 
convictions, but because they stand in living relation to 
the purpose of the personal God. The function of the 
religious educator, then, is not to destroy but to fulfill 
the religious beliefs which he finds in those whom he is 
educating. In all sincere human error there is a gleam 
of truth that may lead the life toward God. At any 
rate, the positivist cannot assert that his interpretation 
of this error is the only reasonable one. 

The most ancient and the most pressing objection to 
the belief in more-than-human values remains to be con- 
sidered, an objection which impresses every human 
being, namely, the fact of evil in life. It is all well 
enough, we may be told, to prate of a real world of 
eternal good as an explanation of our experiences of 
value. But experiences of value are not the whole of 
life. Not always do we enjoy the beatific vision. Not 
always are we triumphantly sustained by faith in a true 
and moral and beautiful order that elevates us to itself 
by superhuman power when we reach toward it. Such 
experiences are selected facts, occurring in their pure 
forms only occasionally in the best of lives and entirely 
absent from the consciousness of great masses of the 
race. Instead of eternal values, struggle for the bare 
necessities of life, trivial desires and petty interests 
occupy the mind; or, worse still, there are torturing 
agonies of flesh and spirit and sins of the evil will. Such 
are the elements of the true picture of the human race 
which, we are told, must supplant the Utopian dream of 
an eternal world of light and goodness. 

If anything is objective, the positivist would urge, 


MORE-THAN-HUMAN VALUES 133 


in the light of the instruction of experience we might 
well infer that evil is. Demons, spirits of ill omen, 
Satans and devils—these are nearly as universal objects 
of religious belief as is God himself. Whether we con- 
front life as a whole or its distinctly religious part, we 
seem to find reasons for regarding the bad as equally 
universal, real, and objective with the good. 

It must first of all be repeated that religion has never 
undertaken to blink the fact of evil. If the reader 
recalls the previous chapter, he will remember that the 
human value of religion was found to consist largely 
in the manner in which religion solved the tragic prob- 
lems set by suffering and sin and death. Religion, we 
said, far from minimizing the evil of sin (for example) 
at first intensifies and accentuates it by regarding it as 
no mere calamity within individual life or even a human 
society, but as a cosmic tragedy, a separation of the 
life from God. Reference to the fact of evil cannot 
take religion by surprise. From the very first, religion 
has offered some sort of solution of the problem of evil. 

This is not the occasion to undertake a full examina- 
tion of the problem of evil nor of those modern realisms 
and pragmatisms for which it is no problem. But a 
few general considerations may not be out of place. 
First of all, it seems clear that the good is basic and 
normative, while evil is a deviation from the good. The 
nature of good or value may be defined without any 
reference to evil, or without implying that anyone ever 
fails to attain the highest good. On the other hand, 
you cannot define what you mean by evil without refer- 
ence to the good. Evil is always in-consistency, dis- 
harmony, absence or repudiation of or inattention to 
the good. Evil implies good as a necessarily prior con- 
cept; but good (contrary to many popular ideas) does 
not presuppose evil. 


134 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


“The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound; 

What was good shall be good, with evil so much good more; 

On the earth, the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect 
round.” 


One does not need to take every syllable of Browning 
with painful literalness in order to discern in his words 
a profound truth—the truth, namely, that there is not 
the same reason for asserting the objectivity of evil as 
of good. 

This, of course, does not carry us far toward a solu- 
tion. Whatever has been said on the problem of evil 
has always left questions, facts unexplained, seemingly 
irreducible mysteries. Is this, I wonder, a fatal bar- 
rier against religious faith in the reality of values? It 
does not seem to religion itself like such a barrier. Nor 
does logic require that it be so regarded. What theory 
about ultimate questions completely solves every prob- 
lem? Certainly, the presence of a surd does not inyali- 
date the objectivity of a system. Evil is a problem not 
wholly solved; so is the relation between mind and 
body, so is freedom, so is error, so is the value of 7, and 
so, too, 1s the experience of value itself. But is it not 
more reasonable to regard the existence of evil as an 
unsolved problem in a universe in which the deepest 
reality is good and wholly worthful than either to adopt 
a dualism that regards good and evil as equal powers 
or to join with the positivists in abandoning the objec- 
tivity of good and thus to evade the whole cosmic prob- 
lem of evil? 

Any doctrine of the fall of man and the origin of 
evil, whether from Plotinus or Saint Augustine or Mrs. 
Eddy, leaves us still questioning why in a divinely 
ordered universe such things must be or could be. But 
any doctrine of the rise of man and of the origin of 
value which denies the objectivity of value, as do so 


MORE-THAN-HUMAN VALUES 135 


many current philosophies, leaves a more serious prob- 
lem than the existence of sin in a universe of free per- 
sons, namely, the problem of how a universe without 
mind or value could produce mind and value. 

The last word of religion is faith and hope in God, 
but a more rational faith than that of the positivist who 
accepts his human values without trying to understand 
their more-than-human relations. Our personal idealism 
interprets the experiences of religion as well as man’s 
other experiences. But the reader should not suppose 
that the view here presented is demonstrably certain. It 
is, however, only fair to say that our metaphysical per- 
sonalism gives an account of the religious life that is 
truer to experience as a whole than is positivism and 
further is able to refute positivistic attacks. 


9. THE CONCLUSION OF THE CHAPTER 


We are now prepared to state briefly the net outcome 
of the present chapter. Religion, in its beliefs and atti- 
tudes, we have found, meets a wide range of the deepest 
needs of life. It offers men a source of inner satis- 
faction by its faith that the values which it experiences 
have an origin and meaning which is more-than-human. 
It is true, we have found, that the attempt is often made 
to deny this superhuman factor and to explain all the 
forms of religious life as merely subjective or social 
phenomena. But if we contrast this positivistic atti- 
tude with the metaphysical account of religion, we find 
that the former denies or abridges nearly everything 
that is really characteristic in religion. Religion is meta- 
physical; it is a relation to the supernatural. It is 
supernaturalism, not as belief in arbitrariness, lawless- 
ness, and capricious interventions, but in the more sober 
sense which holds, negatively, that the realm of nature 
visible to the sense is not all that is real or that needs 


136 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


to be explained, and, positively, that the realm of values, 
especially of those values revealed in religious expe- 
rience, is objectively and eternally real. Religious 
thought has in most cases although not in all tended to 
interpret this realm as the conscious experience and 
will of one Supreme Person, God. Any experience or 
belief which includes no reference to the more-than- 
human is improperly called religious, whatever use it 
may make of religious terminology or of emotions other- 
wise associated with religion. Such a judgment, at least, 
would follow from the results of this chapter. 


CHAPTER VI 


RELIGIOUS VALUES AND RECENT 
PHILOSOPHY 


1. THE PROBLEM OF THE CHAPTER 


RELIGION, we have found in the previous chapters, 
claims more-than-human value. That is, it is essentially 
metaphysical, not merely positivistic; its God is im- 
manent in the world of our experience, it is true, but he 
transcends that experience and could not be the object 
of worship, as religion has experienced worship, unless 
he were more than human. Positivism, we have held, 
does not do justice by the religious experience. 

The interpretation of religious ideals and values at 
which we have arrived is not unchallenged in the intel- 
lectual world. Our discussion of the positivistic 
tendency in modern thought has already made this clear. 
In the present chapter, we aim to consider in more de- 
tail competing interpretations of religious values offered 
in some of the major philosophical systems of the pres- 
ent time, in the light of the ideal of reasonableness out- 
lined in Chapter I. 

The status of religious values is a burning focus of 
discussion to-day. Religious experience in most of its 
forms, certainly in all of its Christian forms, whether 
in worship of God or service of man, is very certain that 
it is dealing with values that are objective and eternal. 
When the religious soul prays, it intends, as we have 
seen, to commune with a real God; it does not mean 
merely to heighten the efficiency of its life by the use 
of subjective psychological laws. When it gives a cup 
of cold water it does so “in my name”’—that is, it links 

137 


138 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


its service and the person served with the real God. Re- 
ligion, then, is essentially metaphysical; it is a relation 
to a reality other-than-human. 

But there is a very prevalent belief to-day to the 
effect that the testimony of religious experience is fal- 
lacious; and that religion is simply a complex of beliefs 
and emotions that have grown up around certain aspects 
of group life. On this view, religion means devotion to 
human society, loyalty to social ends, group conscious- 
ness. Religion, we are told, consists in keeping the 
Golden Rule. God and immortality are but names for 
the ideal worth of society. Many currents of thought 
share in this belief. For example, positivistic philos- 
ophy before and since Comte, sociological study of reli- 
gion of the Durkheim school, much pragmatism, Ethical 
Culture Societies and the like, tendencies in literature 
to the deification of man, the neo-realistic rejection of 
a moral and spiritual ontology, the view that social 
problems alone are vital and that we should devote all 
our energies to reforming the industrial order instead 
of losing our way in the mazes of a metaphysical God. 
Indeed, the predominant current of thought outside of 
distinctly Christian circles is in the direction of what 
may be broadly designated positivism, that type of 
philosophy historically derived from Comte, and holding 
that human knowledge is confined to the realm of our 
sense experience. 


2. A RESTATEMENT OF THE GENERAL ISSUR: POSITIVISM 
vs. METAPHYSICS 


Here then is the problem: Is the religion of to-morrow 
to be metaphysical or positivistic? If metaphysical, it 
will believe that righteousness and beauty and truth are 
eternally real in the personal God whom it loves and 
on whom its hopes are based. If positivistic, it will 


RECENT PHILOSOPHY 139 


find all its value and all its hope in what humanity can 
do for itself. Either mankind must regard its life and 
destiny as a cooperative undertaking of the human and 
the divine, in which each plays an essential part for the 
realization of eternal values; or else man’s world must 
be viewed as merely human, the very concept of the 
divine being only a mirroring of what humanity longs 
for. 

These alternatives are no mere airy, fine-spun cobwebs 
of speculation that the first real broom will flick away 
to the dust-heap. They reach (as we have been trying 
to show) into the deepest needs of the human soul, into 
the sources of life’s hopes, and life’s meaning; and the 
choice of one alternative or the other will probably do 
more to affect the total perspective of a person’s outlook 
on life than any other one choice he can make. The 
problems involved are individual and social, affecting 
in the end economics, art, jurisprudence, education— 
indeed, every human activity. The influence on edu- 
cation is made especially clear in a sentence from 
Hoernlé’s report on a Congress of Philosophy held at 
Oxford. Writing in The New Republic for December 
15, 1920, he says, “The waning influence of religion, in 
its traditional forms, on the modern world and the con- 
sequent problem of moral education on a nonreligious 
basis provided the occasion for a fresh discussion of 
the relation of morals and religion.” It is significant 
that the net outcome of this discussion was a reaffirma- 
tion of the need of a religious basis for morals. 

In this chapter we shall raise the question as to the 
adequacy of various philosophies to interpret religious 
experience. This putting of the problem is based on the 
idea that the task of philosophy is to interpret life as 
a whole. Experience, we assume, is fundamental; 
theory is relative to experience. A theory must be 


140 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


Judged in the light of its adequacy to account for expe- 
rience; experience cannot be ignored in the interesis 
of theory. More explicitly, philosophy must be judged 
(in part, at least) by its adequacy to account for reli- 
gion and experience can never be fairly appraised by a 
philosophy that has not taken religion into account in 
constructing its world view. As Mr. S. Alexander, the 
English realist, has recently written, “A philosophy 
which left one portion of human experience suspended 
without attachment to the world of truth is gravely 
open to suspicion ; and its failure to make the religious 
emotion speculatively intelligible betrays a speculative 
weakness.” 

The principle, accordingly, whereby we shall test 
the various systems in the present study is that which 
we have called (in Chapter I) coherence. It may also 
be called the principle of inclusiveness. A system that 
includes in its interpretation a broader range of reli- 
gious life, a greater number of facts of religious expe- 
rience, is, insofar forth, truer than one which includes 
and accounts for a narrower range of facts. This does 
not necessarily imply that the adequacy of a philosophy 
to include the facts of religion proves its equal adequacy 
as a philosophy of science. The present investigation 
is to confine itself to the religious problem. On this 
basis we shall treat in order the systems known as in- 
strumentalism, neo-realism, absolute idealism (or specu- 
lative philosophy) and personalism. 


3. INSTRUMENTALISM AND RELIGIOUS VALUES 


By instrumentalism is meant John Dewey’s type of 
pragmatism. Dewey is probably the most influential 
figure in American philosophy to-day, and is so recog- 
nized by his colleagues. He is a philosopher in the 
rigorous and technical sense and also in the broad and 


RECENT PHILOSOPHY 141 


humane sense. For him philosophy is both science end 
art; theory and life are not separate in his thinking, 
as in so many systems. Nothing human is foreign to 
him: every burning issue of the age attracts his atten- 
tion. No question is excluded from his philosophy on 
the ground that it falls within the field of economics, or 
politics or pedagogy. His influence on current thought 
and practice, especially in the educational field, is 
very great. 

In February and March of the year 1920 Professor 
Dewey delivered a series of lectures at the Imperial 
University of Japan in Tokyo, which he later published 
under the title Reconstruction in Philosophy (New 
York: Henry Holt and Company, 1920). This state- 
ment of his position will serve as our chief source for 
this discussion, since it is his clearest and most concise 
formulation of it. Reference will also be made to his 
later writings, such as Human Nature and Conduct 
(New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1922) and 
Haperience and Nature (Chicago: Open Court Publish- 
ing Co., 1925). The latter work is perhaps to be viewed 
as Dewey’s magnum opus, since he wrote it as the first 
lecturer on the Paul Carus Foundation, to which 
position he was chosen by a committee of the Eastern 
and Western Divisions of the American Philosophical 
Association. Some reference will also be made to other 
instrumentalists, influenced by Dewey. 

Dewey’s plea for “Reconstruction in Philosophy” is 
based on a genetic account of philosophy. Philosophy, 
he tells us, arose out of a very definite social situation. 
There was a time when man’s life was concerned either 
with securing food and shelter or with fancies, feelings, 
and desires. Then the desires that recurred in social 
experience became the basis of group tradition, out of 
which ways of life, poetry, cult, and doctrine, emerged. 


142 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


Here, then, is the root of morals and religion. But man 
cannot always live in the world of his desires: he gradu- 
ally acquires “matter-of-fact,” positivistic knowledge. 
His desires are checked by the brute facts of experience. 
At first only his particular desires would be felt to be 
frustrated. But as matter-of-fact knowledge increased 
it would come into conflict with the whole spirit and 
temper of traditional and imaginative beliefs in morals 
and religion. This happened in the Sophistic movement 
In Greece; and the fact that Socrates approached the 
problem from the side of matter-of-fact method was the 
real cause of his being made to drink the hemlock. 
Plato, however, threw the weight of his influence on the 
side of traditional emotionalized belief; not by accept- 
ance of raw tradition, indeed, but by developing “a 
method of rational investigation and proof which should 
place the essential elements of traditional belief upon 
an unshakable basis” and should, by purifying them, 
add to their power and authority. Metaphysics becomes 
a substitute for custom as the source and guarantor of 
the higher moral and social values. This, according to 
Dewey (whose ideas and language we have been follow- 
ing closely), was the origin of philosophy; and its 
origin has determined its meaning and value. - 
Philosophy, then, is sworn in advance to the mission 
of extracting the moral essence of tradition in a fashion 
congenial to the spirit of past beliefs. Philosophy has 
never been unbiased and free. She has always been 
apologetic. She has been a handmaid not of theology 
alone, but also of the traditional mores. In order to 
fulfill her apologetic mission, philosophy has made 
parade of the apparatus of reason and proof. But the 
emotional and social subject matter of the beliefs with 
which she was predestined to deal (and to agree) did 
not admit of logical demonstration. Hence, the history 


RECENT PHILOSOPHY 1438 


of philosophy has made a show of proof, of hairsplitting 
logic, of the externals of system, all resulting in futile 
abstractions. 

Since philosophy was aiming to support a tradition 
that was pervasive and comprehensive in the group life, 
she had to create an interpretation of reality that should 
be absolute. Thus arose the distinction of empirical 
and noumenal, positivistic science being assigned to the 
former, a perishing and imperfect world, and ultimate 
standards to the latter, which alone is ultimately real. 
At bottom, when philosophy has talked about truth and 
reality, she has not meant truth and reality at all; she 
has meant merely to symbolize the permanence and 
absoluteness of the essential social purposes, aspira- 
tions, and traditions of the group to which the philos- 
opher belongs. 

Dewey’s prophetic inspiration is therefore icono- 
clastic; he would do away with delusion, and make 
philosophy overtly espouse the function that has always 
been hers behind the veil of metaphysics. A recon- 
structed philosophy would abandon all search for meta- 
physical ultimates, and concentrate on the task of clari- 
fying men’s ideas as to the social and moral strifes of 
their own day. 

The preceding paragraphs give the substance of 
Dewey’s first chapter, ideas which the remainder of the 
book expands with historical and scientific learning and 
the zeal of a reformer, a new lawgiver, proclaiming, 
Thou shalt not make unto thee any metaphysics, but 
thou shalt love society with all thy mind and with all 
thy heart. As Sterling P. Lamprecht puts the same idea, 
“it is both bad logic and bad practice to tie up the va- 
lidity of ideals with ontological speculations.’ 





1In a review of Leighton, Religion and the Mind of To-day, in 
Jour. Phil., 32 (1925), p. 135. 


144 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


It is evident that Dewey’s little book, which may be 
regarded as one of the most significant pieces of philo- 
sophical writing in America in its decade, is thorough- 
going positivism, more pragmatic and less sentimental 
in its treatment of religion than Comte. Religious faith 
in an objective personal God and personal immortality 
is part and parcel of the metaphysical midnight which 
disappears when the sun of positivistic science rises. 
It does not need to be refuted in detail; it sinks with 
the ship that bears it. And with it sinks substan- 
tially all of the human value of religion; there being 
left, so to speak, nothing but the religion of human 
value. For, like Comte, Dewey leaves a function for 
the religious spirit; in the positivistic future it will fur- 
nish an imaginative background to scientific dealing 
with social problems. In that day, saith Dewey, “sci- 
ence and emotion will interpenetrate, practice and im- 
agination will embrace” (p. 212); and this will be reli- 
gion. This is Dewey’s final word—the recognition of a 
need for religion in life, if religion be only imaginative 
emotion. In Haperience and Nature he reasserts the 
ideal of intelligence as critical method as “the reason- 
able object of his deepest faith and loyalty,’ and hastens 
sensitively to defend himself against the charge that 
even this is “romantic idealization.”’? 

In Human Nature and Conduct, however, it must be 
said, a very different level of thought about religion 
emerges. Here Dewey tells us that “the ideal means 

. . a sense of these encompassing continuities with 
their infinite reach”; speaks of religion as ‘a sense of 
the whole” and as “marking the freedom and peace of 
the individual as a member of an infinite whole,” “a 
consoling and supporting consciousness of the whole 





*Haeperience and Nature, pp. 436-4387. 


RECENT PHILOSOPHY 145 


to which it [every act] belongs and which in some sense 
belongs to it.” Religion is, then, “joyful emancipation.” 
“In its presence we put off mortality and live in the uni- 
versal.’* In these utterances Dewey is plainly asserting 
the more-than-human values of religion. He is striking 
a note irreconcilable with his own positivism. He seems 
to experience a temporary flaring-up of his own early 
idealism. At any rate, it can be paralleled in no other 
of his recent writings that I have seen, nor can it be 
fitted into the scheme of a positivistic instrumentalism ; 
or if it can be, then positivism is metaphysics and instru- 
mentalism is idealism. If we take him at his word in 
Reconstruction in Philosophy, he means to be positivis- 
tic, not metaphysical. 

It would appear evident that this new-positivism has 
tried to apply the criterion of inclusiveness; that is, it 
has tried to give an account of all sides of experience. 
But has it done justice to all sides? An interpretation 
which would compel the abandonment of every essen- 
tially religious idea in all of the great religions, while 
leaving the methods, presuppositions, and results of 
Science uncriticized invites inquiry and investigation. 
It appears unfair to great realms of experience. Has 
Dewey’s positivism successfully destroyed traditional 
religion? Must we abandon God for democracy’s sake? 
Before committing ourselves, we should examine 
Dewey’s positions carefully. Several points merit at- 
tention. | 

First of all, it is to’ be noted that the point of Dewey’s 
whole argumentation turns about the assumption that 
positive science is true and that moral and religious 
tradition is false. The former states matters of fact; 
the latter only formulates group habits and desires. 





*Human Nature and Conduct, pp. 330-332. 


146 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


But why is it certain that the scientific method and tra- 
dition are exclusively true, whereas the religious are 
false? Is it because the religious are based on desire? 
But is not scientific knowledge also a product of cu- 
riosity and desire? Until desire arises science is im- 
possible; fragments of fact may be forced into our life 
in spite of ourselves, but science must be a welcome 
guest or she will never enter. Or is it because religion 
is a social tradition? How long, then, could science sur- 
vive without social tradition? Is it because religious 
truths are not absolutely demonstrated? Unfortunate 
suggestion! What room has science for absolutes? The 
world of science is a world of working hypotheses. Is 
it because religion won’t work? Assuredly it will not 
work if one refuses to make the initial working hypothe- 
sis about God and the human soul that religion makes: 
but why refuse? | 
Hypotheses, Dewey tells us, are of value only as they 
render men’s minds more sensitive to life about them. 
Now, it has seemed to be the peculiar function of reli- 
gious faith to perform precisely this service. We seem 
forced to say that Dewey scarcely gives religion a fair 
chance, but proves the supremacy and exclusive truth 
of scientific method by his initial assumption; the as- 
sumption, namely, that the whole real world with which 
we have to deal is the world of sense experience or 
“matter-of-fact,” as he calls it. This assumption is pre- 
cisely what religion challenges. Proof by assumption is 
not proof. In order to interpret life at all we must, it 
is true, make assumptions, devise hypotheses; but as- 
sumptions should not be made arbitrarily. They should 
grow out of experience, function in experience, and take 
the widest possible range of experience into account. 
The Dewey assumption fulfills these conditions only for 
one who begins and ends by knowing, in some mys- 


RECENT PHILOSOPHY 147 


terious and authoritative way, that religion is not at all 
what it has seemed to be, a real relation between man 
and God. 

Has not Dewey achieved his banishment of metaphys- 
ics and metaphysical religion largely by the creation 
of an artificial dilemma? According to his view, our 
interpretations arise either from desire or from matter 
of fact. We have hinted grounds for dissatisfaction 
with this dilemma. On Dewey’s view, religion is always 
and only a product of desire; science is always and only 
matter of fact. Religion always leads to error, science 
always to truth. This dilemma not only ignores the 
desires of which every science is the realization, but 
also the matters of fact, the real experiences, out of 
which every religion has grown. _ 

The imperfect disjunction, either desire or matter of 
fact, appears to be in part, at least, the expression of a 
very prevalent tendency of thought to-day. For many 
minds there appear to be only two views on any given 
subject—the traditional view and the modern view. The 
traditional view is always false and evil; the modern 
true and good. Such a standpoint tends to blur the 
really important distinction, which is not that between 
utterly novel science and outworn beliefs, but that be- 
tween the positivistic and the metaphysical interpreta- 
tions of experience, each of which has its traditions, and 
each of which is constantly developing novel forms and 
points of view. The result of this is that a positivis- 
tically minded critic will often attack some antiquated 
religious belief and then, rendered confident by the vic- 
tory over a man of straw, will infer that he has de- 
stroyed religion. Religion is more than tradition, just 
as science is more than tradition. He who does not 
recognize this fact is in danger of failure to face the real 
problems in any fair way. 


148 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


Dewey, of course, could reply to all this that his real 
objection to tradition is not merely that it is traditional 
but that some tradition has its origin in desires and emo- 
tions rather than in matters of fact. Suppose we agree 
with Dewey, and consent to live in a world in which 
there is nothing but the objects of positivistic science, 
that is, the facts of sense experience. In such a world, 
we must then urge, there is no goal or purpose for hu- 
man life, no reason for doing one thing rather than 
another. Moral obligation and conscience do not exist. 
Loyalties and faiths, even when “critical intelligence” 
is their object, are, as Dewey uneasily suspected some- 
one would say, mere “romantic idealizations.” If desire 
has no legitimate guiding function in life, there is noth- 
ing which would stimulate our initiative: not even the 
sanctions of pleasure and pain are an adequate ground 
for action in a world of which you can only say, bodies 
fall, fire burns, ice melts, and diamonds cut glass. Of 
the purely positivistic world, with desire eliminated, 
such propositions, and such only, are true. 

But obviously, by the elimination of desire as a 
ground for religious belief, Dewey does not mean to go 
to any such extreme as this. A world of mere fact which 
man was passively contemplating would doubtless chill 
his blood. His characteristic attitude toward life is 
one of “creative intelligence,” of “reconstruction”—not 
in philosophy alone but in every field. The business of 
thought is, on his view, to discover humanity’s ills and 
learn how to remedy them. “Growth itself is the only 
moral end” ;* we might say that his motto is, Move on. 
He earnestly desires progress. 

Thus it appears that desire, crushed to earth, will rise 
again. When desire was the root of traditional morals 





‘Reconstruction in Philosophy, p. 177. 


RECENT PHILOSOPHY 149 


and religion, it was a root of bitterness and of all evil, 
poisoning the springs of philosophy and necessitating 
radical reconstruction. But now it reappears, and in 
far more tyrranical réle, for now one desire, and one 
only, is the supreme good and the end of life, namely, 
the desire for change. For the scientific spirit, as Profes- 
sor Dewey interprets it, “the world, or any part of it as 
it presents itself at a given time, is accepted or acqui- 
esced in only as material for change.”> Growth, we 
have seen, is the only moral end; that is, change. 
Science and philosophy alike are subservient to this one 
dominating desire, which must not have “perfection as 
a final goal,” or any ‘fixed ends to be attained.” If we 
are fairly representing Dewey’s thought, his principle 
is that intelligence ought to be completely in the service 
of desire, desire for change. 

A curious situation indeed: traditional religion is to 
be rejected because it was based on desire, in order to 
substitute for it a philosophy based on desire. In the 
end, therefore, it would appear that Dewey’s hostility 
to religion is really not due to the genesis of religion 
in the life of desire, but, rather, to its metaphysical char- 
acter, that is, to the fact that it ventures to have faith 
in an eternal reality which lies beyond the realm that 
our desires can manipulate at will. The question at 
issue is this: Can human life find something real and 
eternal to worship and to contemplate, or are its needs 
fully met by a program of action? This putting of the 
question would appear to meet instrumentalism on its 
own ground squarely. Dewey’s whole view is based on 
the principle that men need hypotheses which will ren- 
der their minds more sensitive to life about them. Now, 
if there is a spiritual life about us, the life of God, we 





5Ib., p. 114. 


150 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


must assume attitudes toward that life by appropriate 
hypotheses, by acts of faith. 

Dewey and his school fear a type of philosophy and of 
religion that is unrelated to the world of actual expe- 
rience; but in their fear of the extremes of metaphysical 
extravagance they seem to have forgotten that all real 
thought requires hypothesis and interpretation which 
carry us beyond the experience of the moment, and even 
beyond any possible experience of our own, if we are to 
make sense of that experience. The interior of the earth, 
past history, the future, the feelings of others, all lie 
in a realm that can never be my present experience. 

In ideal values, too, there is a meaning which carries 
us beyond the actual into the imperative. Obligation, 
we have seen in Chapter IT, is a fact that 1s more than 
a fact. But when Dewey talks about ideals one finds 
that he assumes their imperative character, yet without 
making any provision for it in his thinking, for he wants 
philosophers to make clear to a troubled humanity “that 
ideals are continuous with natural events, that they but 
represent their possibilities.”® All of this is true so far 
as it goes; yet it falls short of furnishing any clear cri- 
terion for selecting among these possibilities. The lack 
of a criterion that goes beyond the mere assumption that 
biological and social life ought to be preserved and de- 
veloped is what makes pragmatism, in spite of itself, im- 
practical. Its refusal to acknowledge the further impli- 
cations of the “ought” which it loyally obeys gives it 





SQuoted by M. C. Otto, Things and Ideals. (New York, Henry Holt 
and Company, 1924), p. xii. Otto’s book is a vividly written ex- 
position of the practical and positivistic point of view. The essence 
of the book is found on p. 129, where the writer introduces a quota- 
tion by the words, “John Dewey is right.” The reader who desires 
to pursue the literature of modern positivism further will find 
another good presentation of that point of view in HE. C. Hayes, 
Sociology and Hthics. (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1921). 


RECENT PHILOSOPHY 151 


an intellectually reactionary character; for, like all pos- 
itivism, it can survive in its present form only by refus- 
ing to think about its own presuppositions. 

It is a very familiar argument that positivism is self- 
refuting if it both reduces knowable reality to sense data 
and also speaks of society, for society includes many 
persons, and the other persons are not my sense data: 
they are metaphysical so far as my consciousness is con- 
cerned. No sense experience can reveal to me the inside 
of another’s mind. Behind his words, his smile, his acts, 
there are his thought, and feeling, and will. It will be 
a long time before the pan-behaviorists convince us that 
consciousness is bodily behavior. No, society is a realm 
of persons, whose conscious life is an entirely different 
fact from their bodies. If so, the very concept Society 
‘is a metaphysical one. But it is in assertions about 
personality and society that the essence of Dewey’s 
thought consists. “When the consciousness of science 
is fully impregnated with the consciousness of human 
value,” he tells us,’ then the dualism of material and 
ideal will be broken down. That is, a metaphysical 
proposition about human personalities is the key even 
to the meaning of science. But if so much metaphysics 
be good, why not more? If we need to acknowledge our 
fellows and their value, does not religious experience 
make it justifiable to go further and to acknowledge the 
being of an eternal spiritual person to interpret the pro- 
foundest experiences of life? 

To summarize: instrumentalism, according to its most 
recent expression, would appear to deny the truth and 
value of almost everything that has been precious to 
the characteristically religious experience of the human 
race, and to frustrate the spiritual desires of religion for 





ODE Cl DL lo: 


152 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


the eternal in the interest of the desire for change. This 
bald statement says nothing of the ethical and social 
values of instrumentalism, but is concerned only to 
point out its unsatisfactoriness as a philosophy of reli- 
gion. Dewey’s positivism has, however, contributed one 
idea that is of very great importance to religion, namely, 
the idea of the value of human consciousness, individual 
and social. It is probably this factor in his philosophy 
that makes it seem to many the gospel of a new age. 


4. THE NEW RBALISM AND RELIGIOUS VALUES 


Alongside of instrumentalism as a vigorous recent 
movement in philosophy should be named the new real- 
ism which has shown great productivity and energy both 
in England and America. The neo-realistic movement is 
no one clearly unified body of doctrine, but it is marked 
by several outstanding traits. Its method is to analyze 
the given into terms and relations which cannot be 
analyzed further; that is, it proceeds like chemistry or 
mathematics.® It finds the aim of philosophy to be that 
of understanding experience; and it holds that one al- 
ways understands by analyzing. The new realism thus 
differs sharply from instrumentalism. The latter de- 
Sires action, life, motion; the former, knowledge, under- 
standing, analysis. For instrumentalism the center of 
interest lies in the human person, his needs and desires; 
for the new realism the presence of the human person 
in a situation is an incident from which thought can 
and must abstract: nothing is added to an analysis by 
the remark that it is the work of a man. 

The new realism has directed its polemic, however, 
not chiefly against pragmatism, but, rather, against 
idealism. Idealism has been characterized by interest 





*See Chapter I of this book and E. S. Brightman, An Introduction 
to Philosophy, pp. 22-29 and 231-236. 


RECENT PHILOSOPHY 153 


in consciousness, mind, and organic wholes, such as per- 
sonality and values. Neo-realistic method, carried out 
to the bitter end by its American exponents, analyzes 
these wholes into elements and regards them as relations 
among terms which in themselves are neither personal 
nor valuable. Mind and value® are like the rainbow— 
lovely and insubstantial, an evanescent radiance which 
science analyzes as consisting of certain relations among 
entities which in themselves bear no resemblance to 
rainbows. So the realist analyzes experience into its 
elements, which the American new realists call “neu- 
tral entities.” This term, coined by Dr. H. M. Sheffer, 
indicates that the ultimate terms and relations at which 
analysis arrives are in themselves neither mental nor 
physical. Now, these terms and relations turn out to be 
of many irreducible kinds. This philosophy is therefore 
pluralistic. Such in broad outline are some of the 
phases of a type of thought that has developed very rap- 
idly in the past ten or fifteen years. 

How does such a philosophy deal with religious 
values? Instrumentalism, as we found, sought to under- 
mine, or at least to explain, religion by tracing it to its 
origin of religion in desire, as distinct from matter-of- 
fact knowledge. Neo-realism also finds the origin of 
religion in desire, for religion is an outgrowth of the 
values of life, and the valued is the desired. Dewey, as 
we saw, used this fact to discredit religion; but some of 
the neo-realists are distinctly more friendly to religion 
than is instrumentalism. Since realistic method calls 
for a complete analysis of experience, no such major 
outstanding fact as religion could well be overlooked. 

Let us cite a few instances of the school’s interest in 





*See E. S. Brightman, ‘‘Neo-Realistic Theories of Value,” in E. C. 
Wilm, Studies in Philosophy and Theology. (New York: The 
Abingdon Press, 1922), pp. 22—92. 


154 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


religion. Professor Perry’s Present Philosophical Ten- 
dencies'® reveals the author’s interest in the second chap- 
ter, on “Scientific and Religious Motives in Philos- 
ophy”; and the concluding chapter, “A Realistic Phil- 
osophy of Life,” sketches the author’s philosophy of reli- 
gion. His later book, The Present Oonflict of Ideals,\4 
deals with the moral problems of national ideals from a 
philosophical standpoint; and this involves frequent 
discussions of religious questions. The book closes with 
an appeal for religion, as James conceived it. Professor 
Spaulding’s The New Rationalism” is, as he tells us 
in the Preface, “a Neo-realism of ideals that are discov- 
ered by reason, as well as of those reals that are dis- 
closed to the senses and that form what we call nature.” 
The world, he believes, needs a philosophy “that holds 
to the actuality of ideals . . . rather than one that jus- 
tifies our living only in accordance with our biological 
nature.” In harmony with this aim, the closing chapter 
of the book is on “Realism’s Teleology and Theology.” 
Mr. Alexander, the English realist, published two vol- 
umes of Gifford Lectures, entitled Space, Time and 
Deity,’ which has aroused international attention as a 
work of the first magnitude. It is evident, then, that 
religion is an object of genuine concern to the neo- 
realists. 

We shall now consider briefly how the philosophers 
just mentioned work out their philosophy of religion. 
Particular stress will be laid on Perry. In stating the 
views in question, the writer will necessarily condense, 
freely paraphrase, and interpret; if he fails to do full 
justice to the meaning of the authors discussed, he takes 





“New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1912 and later editions. 
“New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1918. 

*New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1918. 

“London: Macmillan & Co., 1920. 


RECENT PHILOSOPHY 155 


refuge in the plea of Perry, who writes, “I have assumed 
it to be more important to discover whether certain 
current views were true or false than to discuss with 
painstaking nicety the question of their attribution” 
iE ere VIL) 

For Perry, religion is an attitude toward the fortune 
of values in the career of the human race. He holds that 
the characteristic religious attitude combines faith and 
action. Faith is essentially the hope that values may 
prevail (PPT, p. 340), until they shall “enter into pos- 
session of the world at large, as they have already come 
to possess it in part” (7b., p. 343); the goal for action 
is thus set. Value, in his theory, relates to interest or 
desire; nothing is inherently valuable, but anything may 
acquire value in proportion as it fulfills interest; the 
more interests it fulfills, the more valuable it becomes. 
This is clearly a quantitative, subjective, and humanistic 
theory of value. Apart from man and man’s interests, 
there is nothing good or valuable in the whole universe; 
the eternal order of terms and relations which is the 
ultimate being of everything is as valueless as a chest 
of bank notes in the depths of the Pacific. Only in so 
far as terms and relations and banknotes fulfill human 
interests are they of value. This view permits Perry 
to assert that “realism explicitly repudiates every spirit- 
ual or moral ontology” (PPT, p. 344); the universe is 
not already or eternally a moral order, and there is no 
spiritual reality at its heart. If the moral and the spir- 
itual were already the true reality of things, what more 
(our author asks) would there be to do in such a world? 
‘He who judges the world to be what he aspires to have 
it become is the last man in the world to act effectively 
for the world’s betterment” (PCI, p. 370). 


“In quoting from Perry, we shall refer to Present Philosophical 
Tendencies as PPT, and The Present Conflict of Ideals as PCI. 





156 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


But religion, on Perry’s view, is far from the belief 
in the existence of a perfectly good reality; it is action 
for the world’s betterment, which presupposes that real- 
ity is not now perfect. ‘Religious belief is a confidence 
that what is indifferent will acquire value, and that 
what is bad will be made good through the operation of 
moral agents on a preexisting environment” (PPT, p. 
334). The faith in progress, in the forward movement 
of life, in man’s ultimate complete possession of his 
world—this is religion. Perry finds support for such 
religious faith in observed facts: things do happen on 
account of the good which they will serve, men are in 
some sense free to choose the good, “nature has yielded 
life,” “the forms of life which are most cherished—intel- 
lectual activity, the exercise of the sensibilities, and 
friendly social intercourse—are the very forms of life 
_ which are capable of maintaining and producing them- 
selves” (PPT, p. 345). In short, evolution and human 
history are, on the whole, a progress, in the indefinite 
future continuance of which we are free to believe. 

What shall we say of such a philosophy of religion? 
One is struck, first of all, by its similarity in result with 
instrumentalism, in spite of their differences in starting 
point and in relative interest in the problem of 
religion. The substantial identity of these two schools 
in their practical religious outcome is significant, and 
is a witness, if not to the truth of the position held, at 
least to its influence in current thought. This agreement 
is the more striking in view of the radical differences in 
general outlook between the two schools. Instrumental- 
ism is frankly positivistie and practical in its stand- 
point. Neo-realism appears to be metaphysical and 
intellectualistic; yet its religion is as positivistic and 
practical as Dewey could desire. 

But even the reduced and impoverished religion which 


RECENT PHILOSOPHY 157 


remains when Perry reaches his conclusion has the air 
of being strangely out of place in his realistic world. 
The philosophy which began with strictest analytical 
method ends by allowing a place for faith and hope. 
That which began by swearing allegiance to science ends 
with an outlook for the future that goes far beyond what 
Science warrants. Science expects that the time will 
come when all life on this planet will cease and when 
no conscious being will survive from the entire human 
race to carry on the torch of progress or to remember 
the history of civilization. Such expectations of science 
Perry regards as unproved. ‘To pretend to speak for 
the universe in terms of the narrow and abstract pre- 
dictions of astronomy is to betray a bias of mind that 
is little less provincial and unimaginative than the most 
naive anthropomorphism. What that residual cosmos 
which looms beyond the ‘border of knowledge shall in 
time bring forth, no man that has yet been born can say. 
That it may overbalance and remake the little world of 
things known, and falsify every present philosophy, no 
man can doubt. It is as consistent with rigorous thought 
to greet it as a promise of salvation as to dread it as a 
portent of doom” (PPT, p. 347). 

Perry thus explicitly admits that when it comes to 
living, religious faith must supplement—nay, replace— 
scientific knowledge. But if, in principle, he is willing 
to make this breach in the walls of his system, and if 
analysis is, in the end, not the only instrument with 
which the mind should envisage life, why is thought 
restricted to faith in the future of earthly civilization? 
If one is going to have faith, why not look to the eternal 
as well as to the future? Why not have a faith that 
corresponds to the facts of religious experience? In 
short, if faith be admitted, why not face its full implica- 
tions? Such faith as Perry feels goes too far for the 


158 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


strict logic of scientific method; it does not go far 
enough to satisfy the logic of religious experience. 

Religion, it is true, looks to the future with confi- 
dence, but not merely to the welfare of future genera- 
tions on this earth. It looks also to a life beyond the 
grave. It bases its faith in both futures, here and here- 
after, not merely (with Perry) on a cautious maybe, but 
on the conviction that the Eternal Real is the sort of 
being that can be depended on to increase the values of 
life forever. It lifts up its heart in prayer to God and 
communes with him; it regards life as a cooperation 
with God. These facts are disregarded by the philos- 
ophy in question; and any theory that leaves facts out 
of account is dubious. 

For another reason it appears probable that neo-real- 
ism can have no satisfactory account of religion, namely, 
the conflicting attitudes toward religious values that 
have come to expression within the school. We have 
seen Perry’s theory. It is in express contradiction to 
the view of the distinguished realist, Bertrand Russell, 
whose philosophy of religion has found an already clas- 
sical expression in the essay, “A Free Man’s Worship.» 
Mr. Russell refuses to comfort himself with any hopes or 
faiths. He pictures man for a brief period emerging in 
a universe of blind and unconscious force, conscious that 
he and his race with all their achievements must soon 
utterly perish, yet cherishing “ere the blow falls, the 
lofty thoughts that ennoble his little day, . . . proudly 
defiant of the irresistible forces that tolerate, for a mo- 
ment, his knowledge and his condemnation, to sustain 
alone, a weary but unyielding Atlas, the world that his 
own ideals have fashioned despite the tramping march 
of unconscious power.” Mr. Russell remarks, in the 





*B, Russell, Mysticism and Logic. (New York: Longmans, Green 
and Co., 1921), pp. 46-57. 


RECENT PHILOSOPHY 159 


preface to the volume in which this essay is printed, 
that he now feels less convinced than when he first wrote 
the essay of the objectivity of good and evil; as if that 
were possible! We have seen that Perry is not satisfied 
with Russell’s philosophy of life; yet, after all, is it not 
more consistent with the method and presuppositions 
of realism than is the faith that he proposes? 


5. THE NEw REALISM OF SPAULDING AND ALEXANDER 


A still different philosophy of religion is advanced by 
IX. G. Spaulding, who believes that among the real en- 
tities revealed by an analysis of experience are values 
Which “are real parts of the objective world, external 
to and independent of not only their being perceived, 
conceived, and appreciated, but also of the physiological 
organism.”*® Unlike Perry, who made value dependent 
on a relation to desire, Spaulding asserts the Platonic 
theory of the objectivity of values. “Justice and beauty 
and truth themselves do not change, but remain eter- 
nal, quite outside of time and space.” He takes as 
seriously as Russell the scientific prospect that “the 
physical universe is ‘running down’” and that “seem- 
ingly its end . . . is to become wholly ‘run down,’ and 
then, no more process.” But there are factors in evolu- 
tion of which physical science does not take account, 
namely, values. New values emerge in the process; 
hence, evolution is creative; hence, also, “there is an 
efficient agent or power to produce all values.” That 
which produces values must itself be a value, he argues. 
The realm of objective values which produces values is 
God, “the totality of values.” God is denied to be “a 
psychical being of the nature of will or of intellect, and 
absolute ego, etc., who is relator of all entities, and so 





“The New Rationalism. (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 
1918), p. 508. 


160 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


the fundamental underlying reality of the universe.” 
And yet, apparently conscious of the vagueness of 
his thought, Spaulding speaks of this God in the third 
person masculine, remarks that “if God is personality, 
he is also more than personality,” and designates his 
solution as theistic. 

It is not our purpose to comment on the vagueness or 
looseness of analysis in such theism. Much more sig- 
nificant than these obvious defects is the fact that the 
objectivity and transcendence of religious values here 
win recognition; that within the school that defines the 
universe as indifferent to all value and builds a religion 
on the denial of spiritual or moral ontology, a voice is 
raised to proclaim that spiritual values are real, objec- 
tive, eternal, and efficient. Thus the metaphysical as- 
Serts itself as against the positivistic. 

No account of important realistic contributions to 
religious thought would be complete without a reference 
to Alexander’s Gifford Lectures on Space, Time, and 
Deity.” It is impossible here to do more than sketch 
in barest outline the standpoint of these lectures, which 
have exerted a wide influence. They are based on a 
thorough analysis of the world from a realistic stand- 
point, which results in the view that the spatio-temporal 
order, or Space-Time, as Alexander calls it, is “the 
stuff or matrix out of which things or events are made, 
the medium in which they are precipitated and crystal- 
lized; that the finites are in some sense complexes of 
Space and time.” This means a universe of motion, of 
“continuous redistribution of instants of Time among 
points of Space.” Everything in our universe is made 
of this Space-Time. But it is a characteristic of the 
universe to be constantly differentiating itself into 





“London: Macmillan & Co., 1920. 


RECENT PHILOSOPHY 161 


higher and higher complexes. At present the highest 
ismind. But just as every stage below mind has striven 
toward something higher, so mind looks above and be- 
yond, strains and strives for something still higher. 
This tendency toward ever higher forms Alexander calls 
a nisus toward Deity; and for any given Stage, the stage 
above is Deity. Deity, then, is the upward urge of evolu- 
tion. Alexander speculates, with a quaint sort of neo- 
gnosticism rather than realism, that the next stage 
beyond man will consist of beings which he calls angels 
or finite gods, so that our deity is plural and our religion 
is a twentieth-century polytheism. 

Here, then, are the neo-realistic philosophies of reli- 
gion: that the universe is blind and without value, but 
that man, in his short span of life, with no prospect for 
the future, must bravely and defiantly assert his ideals : 
or, that in the same general sort of universe it is profit- 
able to hope that the human race will indefinitely 
progress; or, that the universe is of a quite different 
sort, with real values eternal and supreme, causing and 
controlling evolution without existing in a divine intel- 
ligence; or, that the world-process is eternally develop- 
ing from the stages of subhuman existence through 
the human to the superhuman, and that this fact is 
Deity. In the face of such conflicting judgments, must 
we not agree that religion is a fact which realism is com- 
pelled to face, but which it does not know what to do 
with? 


6. ABSOLUTE IDEALISM AND RELIGIOUS VALUES 


The classical tradition in English and American 
philosophy since the middle of the nineteenth century 
is that of absolute idealism, the philosophy (largely 
under Hegelian influence) that regards the universe as 
one absolute system, one coherent whole. This whole is 


162 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


sometimes considered as a self, sometimes as a supra- 
personal absolute, sometimes as an X of which you can 
only say that it is the complete solution of all problems 
and fulfillment of all meaning, the final synthesis of all 
theses and antitheses. On any interpretation of abso- 
lute idealism, nothing finite has any self-existence or 
value by itself, or short of its relation to the organic 
whole of reality. 

In 1920 a little book appeared which interpreted the 
meaning of religion for a distinguished representative 
of this school. I refer to Bernard Bosanquet’s What 
Religion Is. This may be taken as a typical expression 
of the attitude of absolute idealism (or speculative 
philosophy, as Bosanquet prefers to call it) toward reli- 
gious values. 

Its less than one hundred pages contain a beautiful 
series of meditations on the meaning of religious expe- 
rience. It might almost be regarded as a manual of de- 
votion rather than of philosophy. It transports us at 
once to an atmosphere very different from that in which 
instrumentalism and neo-realism move. On the whole, 
they have room only for just so much of religion as is 
embodied in the faith in human progress. Bosanquet, 
too, writes on Hope and Progress for Humanity, it is 
true. But even this means something very different to 
Bosanquet from what it means to them. For Dewey 
and Perry, at least, religion means the emotional glow 
that accompanies perpetual growth, the hope that by 
his own striving man may eventually possess the whole 
world in the name of value, a world which, without him 
and his striving, would have no value. For Russell, it 
is the grim determination to grit your teeth and fight, 





*London: Macmillan & Co., 1920. For an excellent critique of 
Bosanquet’s views see R. A. Tsanoff, The Problem of Immortality. 
(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1924), Chap. X. 


RECENT PHILOSOPHY 163 


even though the universe is hostile and the future 
hopeless. 

Bosanquet, however, finds ground for human hope 
not primarily in anything man can do or needs to do, 
but, rather, in the nature of the universe, which as an 
absolute whole is itself the source and criterion of value. 
Man’s life derives its meaning from the perfect Whole 
to which it belongs. “The religious man,” says Bosan- 
quet, “trusts in no strength of his own, and to be perfect 
apart from that in which he trusts would be for him sin 
and self-contradiction.” This trust means “that there is 
always more to be learned, a further power of the values, 
a spiritual progress at least.” The similarity and differ- 
ence between this and Dewey’s final law of growth are 
both striking. Each believes in growth; but Dewey 
regards growth as the ultimate value and end-in-itself, 
whereas Bosanquet measures growth by its relation to 
absolute value. Bosanquet’s hope for the human race 
rests not so much on belief in the perfectibility of man’s 
nature as on confidence in the Eternal, the trust “that 
through all appearances, good is supreme.” 

It is at once evident that Bosanquet’s view is meta- 
physical rather than positivistic. It is also evident that 
it is closer to the facts of religious experience; for reli- 
gion does not merely hope that the future may be better 
than the past, but it also trusts in an eternal perfection. 
Bosanquet points this out when he says that “it only 
requires us to rise above the appearance and keep our 
unhesitating grasp on the reality which is wholly good.” 
It is faith of this sort that expresses itself in genuine 
religion everywhere; a more-than-human giving meaning 
to human life. Such idealism offers man a metaphysical 
and eternal basis for hope rather than such comfort as 
can be extracted from the cheery confidence that things 
will perhaps turn out better than science predicts. Its 


164 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


hope, furthermore, is a rational one, grounded on the 
interpretation of experience as a whole. 

Not alone does Bosanquet thus offer a very different 
interpretation of progress, which seems to do more 
justice by religious experience than the other philos- 
ophies that we have been considering, but he also en- 
visages a wider range. We find him writing of the peace 
of God, salvation, justification by faith, freedom and 
power, unity with God, man and nature, the nature of 
sin, suffering, prayer, and worship. It appeared to be 
the aim of the other philosophers whom we have studied 
to whittle religion down to a minimum in order to fit 
the facts of experience to their theory, while it would 
seem to be Bosanquet’s aim to be catholic and inclusive, 
to take up into his system as much as possible of relli- 
gious life; that is, to fit his theory to experience. He, 
then, is more reasonable, in the sense in which reason- 
ableness was defined in Chapter I. 

Dominating his account of the various aspects of reli- 
gious life is the idealistic faith in a more-than-human 
whole, a universe to which man belongs. Religion is, 
so to speak, recognizing one’s membership in the uni- 
verse. “You cannot be a whole unless you join a whole.” 
This sense of not being our own, of belonging to the 
eternal and supreme good, which is the whole, is free- 
dom and power, is religion, “the only thing that makes 
life worth living at all.” Since we thus belong to the 
eternal, our life is itself eternal. This does not mean for 
Bosanquet that our personality is immortal; the mean- 
ing of our life, rather, its loyalty, its cause, is eternal. 
Whether human consciousness shall survive bodily 
death or not is unimportant. What matters is that the 
value of the whole survives and we are somehow one 
with the whole. How, we do not know or need to know. 
Likewise, prayer finds its interpretation from this same 


RECENT PHILOSOPHY 165 


standpoint; it is “the very meditation which 1s, or at 
the very least which enables us to realize and enter into 
the unity which is religious faith.’ Only this unity 
(and our unity with the whole) is essential to religion. 
Religion leads man beyond himself to reality. 

Thus in a single uplifting and almost ineffable idea 
Bosanquet finds the heart of religion. Everything else 
is superfluous. This idea is sufficiently flexible and 
rich to serve as a center around which to group much 
of the life of religion. It aims to interpret everyone’s 
religious life; not to destroy but to fulfill. But, after all, 
does it not reflect one mood and aspect only and not the 
whole of religious life? Its language is rather that of 
the pantheistic and extreme mystical types of religion 
than of the active and ethical. It forthwith excludes the 
type which sees in personality, human and divine, the 
supreme value, and interprets the human relation to 
the divine in terms of ethical cooperation and social 
companionship as well as in terms of mystical union. 
What absolute idealism thus excludes is precisely that 
part of religion which is and has been its life for most 
believers. 


7. A REVIEW OF THE PRECEDING INTERPRETATIONS OF 
RELIGIOUS VALUES 


The philosophies thus far examined differ at many 
points, but they all agree that religion is an essential 
part of human experience. Philosophy must be tested 
(we have held all through this discussion) by the ade- 
quacy and inclusiveness with which it interprets expe- 
rience. 

In this investigation, it is true, we are not concerned 
with all values, but only with those that we call reli- 
gious. From the standpoint of these values, at least, 
that philosophy will be most adequate which is able to 


166 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


find the fullest meaning in ‘the religious experiences of 
humanity. It is obvious that no philosophy could re- 
gard as true all of the religious experience of the race; 
conflicting valuations and contradictory beliefs con- 
demn such an enterprise at the start. A philosophy of 
religion must be primarily a principle of inclusion and 
interpretation; it must also be a principle of criticism 
and exclusion. It must take care that neither of these 
principles interferes with the legitimate work of the 
other. 

Applying this point of view to the philosophies hith- 
erto considered, we observe that in the positivistie sys- 
tems the aspect of criticism and exclusion greatly over- 
balances that of interpretation and inclusion. To most 
of the religious experiences and values instrumentalism 
says, “No, there is no place for you; for mysticism, for 
prayer, for the very problem of evil, to say nothing of 
its solution, there is no room. There is no God other 
than humanity, hence no communion with God; and no 
future life except that of the future generations of hu- 
manity on this earth.” Only to the religious hope for 
growth, that is, only to the optimistic or melioristic 
aspect of religion, does instrumentalism say, “Yes, enter 
thou into the kingdom prepared for pragmatically true 
ideas as long as they work.” 

The predominant result of neo-realism, as we have 
Seen, is substantially the same as that of instrumental- 
istic positivism, in spite of its greater interest in religion 
and its more evident desire to interpret it. 

Bosanquet’s treatment of religion is, however, far 
more catholic and inclusive. But his treatment, like 
that of instrumentalist and neo-realist, excludes the 
belief in a personal God. Belief in growth, in progress, 
in the unity of a universe that is somehow supremely 
good—these items of religion are conserved; but faith in 


RECENT PHILOSOPHY 167 


a Supreme Person who understands all, loves all, works 
in all—this is vetoed. Such a situation is one of the 
many serious cleavages in the spiritual life of the mod- 
ern world. On the one side, the philosophers, with their 
positivistic programs and beautiful though vague visions 
of the world’s unity; on the other, the vital religious 
life of Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism, and 
many movements in other religions, deriving their vigor 
from faith in a personal God. Greek and Barbarian, 
Jew and Gentile, theory and practice! 


8. PERSONALISM AND RELIGIOUS VALUES 


At least one type of philosophy, however, refuses to 
regard this cleavage as hopeless. The theistic aspect of 
religious experience finds interpretation in that philo- 
sophic movement to which the name “personalism” has 
been attached (notably by Renouvier in France and 
Borden Parker Bowne in this country). This philos- 
ophy is an idealism which holds that persons only are 
real, that every item and fragment of our world exists 
only in and for persons, and that there is one Supreme 
Person who is source of the world-order and creator of » 
the society of persons. Insofar as he is regarded as ful- 
filler of the ideals of highest value, he is God. Such a 
standpoint is no modern fad or erratic provincialism of 
a peculiar group of thinkers; but, with numerous varia- 
tions in detail and in supporting argument, it is one of 
the classic traditions in the history of philosophy. The 
roots of it may be found in Plato, Aristotle, and Augus- 
tine; more specifically it has been held by Berkeley, 
Leibniz, Fichte, Hegel (according to many of his inter- 
preters, if not all), T. H. Green, Maine de Biran, Renou- 
vier, Bowne, Ladd, Royce, Howison, James Ward, Rich- 
ardson, Carr, Pringle-Pattison, Sorley, Rufus M. Jones, 
Youtz, Flewelling, J. 8. Moore, Mary W. Calkins, Hock- 


168 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


ing, Edgar Pierce, Knudson, Strickland, R. A. Tsanoff, 
and many others. 

By way of illustration, let us look again at Sorley’s 
Gifford Lectures on Moral Values and the Idea of God, 
which we have already discussed briefly in Chapter II. 
This book does not aim to be a complete philosophy, nor 
even a complete philosophy of religion. In a sense it 
is not a philosophy of religion at all. It is a novel argu- 
ment for personalistic theism, based on the interpreta- 
tion of moral experience. Following Rickert, Sorley 
holds that our mind takes two attitudes: one, that of 
interest in universals; the other, that of interest in indi- 
viduals. The former is embodied in the natural sci- 
ences; the latter, in history and morals. The former is 
ultimately interested in causes; the latter, in values. 
Each realm in which the mind is interested has its laws. 
A study of the meaning of value shows that intrinsic 
value belongs to persons only—a statement in which 
Sorley is at one with Dewey and Perry. But—and here 
he parts company with them—the laws of value in the 
moral sphere are as objectively valid as the laws of 
causal connection in nature, although they are very 
different and differently apprehended. 

It is this last point which is the center of Sorley’s 
contribution and which does much to establish the 
claims of personalism to be a more adequate philosophy 
of man’s total experience than any of the other philos- 
ophies which we have considered. For, he holds, the 
laws of moral value point to a real objective order of 
value in the universe, just as truly as the laws of nature 
point to an objective natural order, and for the same 
sort of reason, namely, the appeal to the logical ideal of 
reasonableness. In this he agrees with Spaulding’s 
Platonic argument for the objectivity of value. Our 
valuations, our conceptions of justice and benevolence, 


RECENT PHILOSOPHY 169 


love and veracity, point to and presuppose an ideal 
standard to which they ought to conform. If this ideal 
standard is actual, as Sorley and Spaulding agree it is, 
in what does its actuality consist? It is no simple task 
to answer this question. An inclusive answer (what 
Sorley would call a synoptic view) must give an account 
of the objectivity not alone of value, but also of the laws 
of nature, and of the observed incongruity between the 
order of nature and the order of value—all of this in the 
same universe! The universe seems to be divided 
against itself. It not only does not always embody, but 
seems often to oppose all that the order of value would 
demand. 

Sorley offers as the only postulate that meets all the 
conditions the standpoint to which we have referred as 
personalism, which views the world as an expression of 
an Intelligence which is at once a will to goodness and 
a source of power, but which leaves to finite persons a 
certain measure of freedom or self-determination. This 
view accounts for the apparent hostility of nature to 
value by the hypothesis that it is a manifestation of 
divine purpose aiming at “the fashioning and training 
of moral beings.” The objectivity of values would then 
mean their existence as purposes of the Divine Mind. 
This breaks with Spaulding’s impersonalistic value- 
theory, for Sorley cannot understand what would be 
meant by a value that could operate apart from a person. 
Thus Sorley, applying the standard of coherent inclu- 
siveness, which has been our logical guide, arrives at a 
theistic personalism that suggests a theory of progress 
as well as a theory of value. 

Obviously, the same sort of logic which led to the 
objectivity of moral value in a Supreme Person would 
also interpret religious value as a clew to the Divine 
Person, more intimate and more revealing than moral 


170 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


value, significant as that is. The remaining chapters 
will study the central experiences of religious value 
more in detail. 


9. SUMMARY 


We are now ready to summarize our results. Religion 
experiences human life as related to a superhuman and 
eternal reality. Positivism, we saw, omits this relation 
and thus falls short of expressing what religion means. 
We have examined several current philosophical tenden- 
cies with reference to their interpretation of religion, 
assuming as a criterion the tests of inclusiveness and 
coherence. Any theory we hold is true in proportion 
to the range of facts which it explains. The more ex- 
perience it makes intelligible, the truer it is. 

Testing current philosophies by their capacity in- 
clusively to interpret religious experience, we have 
found that instrumentalism and the predominant 
tendencies in the new realism include faith in progress 
(which is in some sense part of every real religion), but 
that their positivism excludes the more-than-human 
values of religious experience. The speculative philos- 
ophy of Bosanquet is more capable of finding room for 
those values. But since it regards the One to whom in 
religion we are related as the organic whole of reality, 
which is not a person, it excludes all those experiences 
which imply relationship between divine and human 
persons, with understanding, love, and response on the 
part of the divine. 

Personalism must also be judged by the same stand- 
ard. Does it include faith in progress? Dewey objected to 
any ideal of perfection except the law of growth. Perry 
objected to any spiritual or moral ontology. Personalism 
asserts that there is an ideal of perfection in eternal 
reality. But is this assertion incompatible, as these 


RECENT PHILOSOPHY 171 


critics hold, with taking our human tasks seriously? By 
no means; for, although the ideal is real in God, it is 
not yet real in finite persons, and the discovery and 
realization of it sets them an infinite task. The objectiv- 
ity of value in God doubtless means that it is not possi- 
ble for God to be any better than he is; it certainly does 
not imply that man has no more to do. It may be that 
even God’s perfection is a perfection of life and growth 
rather than a static completion. 

If progress means advance in acquaintance with true 
values and their possibilities, personalism offers a more 
satisfactory goal for human striving than does positiv- 
ism. It surely includes the values of growth and prog- 
ress. Does it also include the sense of belonging to a 
whole? It does not agree with absolute idealism in re- 
garding man as an organic part of God, it is true, and 
unlike absolute idealism in most of its recent forms, it 
holds to the belief in personal immortality.1° It does 
not, therefore, favor the Nirvana-like absorption of the 
individual dewdrop into the shining sea. But whatever 
value there may be in whole-hearted devotion to a cause 
infinitely beyond and above oneself or in mystical mem- 
bership in an eternal whole, is amply provided for in the 
relation between human and divine personality, which 
is at once a cooperation and (on the human side) a 
surrender. Theistic personalism would thus appear to 
be the most comprehensive philosophy of religious val- 
ues, including all the aspects recognized by other views, 
but finding room for other aspects which they crowd 
out. 

If a religion be one-sidedly mystical or one-sidedly 
intellectual or one-sidedly practical, it may build for 
itself a pantheistic or a positivistic creed; but if it be 





*But see E. S. Brightman, Immortality in Post-Kantian [Idealism 
(Harvard University Press, 1925). 


172 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


an expression of the whole of life, it will utilize the 
principle of personality and thus tend to become theistic. 
Philosophy will in turn react on life and either render 
religious life more rich and fruitful or more barren and 
narrow. If the religion of the future is to be deeply 
rooted in the soil of human nature, it must be meta- 
physical and personalistic. 


CHAPTER VII 
THE EXPERIENCE OF WORSHIP 


1. THE PROBLEM OF THE CHAPTER 


THE progress of thought in this book may be briefly 
summarized. We have aimed to interpret religious val- 
ues. Asa preparation for that task we inquired into the 
meaning of interpretation, that is, of reasonableness, 
as applied to the beliefs of religion (Chapter I). We 
then found it desirable to define the relation between 
the values of religion and of moral experience, coming 
to the conclusion that moral values are as necessary a 
presupposition of any religious values as is reasonable- 
ness a presupposition of any interpretation of religious 
belief (Chapter II). We then noted that the experience 
of value is a datum in need of interpretation as truly 
as is sense experience; and so there was developed the 
distinction between apparent value and real value, be- 
tween value-claims and true values (Chapter III). We 
went on to examine the value-claims of religious expe- 
rience. At first, not yet facing the question of the truth 
of religion, we considered its value in terms of human 
experience (Chapter IV), and in terms of the more-than- 
human object of its devotion (Chapter V.). 

In the process of this investigation it beeame more and 
more apparent that any estimate of the value-claims of 
religion would be merely superficial if it did not face 
and think through the distinction between a positivistic 
and a metaphysical interpretation of religion, and con- 
sider the relative adequacy of current philosophical 
systems as coherent and inclusive accounts of religious 


experience. Chapter VI, therefore, in which these sys- 
173 


174 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


tems were investigated from this point of view, is the 
watershed of the book. Using its results as our working 
hypothesis, we shall return in this chapter to the facts of 
experience, by which every philosophy stands or falls, 
and consider afresh the actual life of religion. 

The heart of any religion is whatever it regards as of 
highest value. To this highest value it usually gives the 
name of God; and the religious attitude to God includes 
and finds its consummation in worship. In studying the 
experience of worship, therefore, we shall be at the very 
center of what religious men and societies have judged 
to be the supreme value of religion. The present chapter 
aims to define that experience as a preparation for its 
evaluation in later chapters. 


2. THE NEED OF REFLECTION ON WORSHIP 


Worship as it is spontaneously experienced is usually 
not reflective or critical. The object of worship and the 
methods of worship are for most people given in the re- 
ligious traditions of the group to which they belong. 
Primitive man worshiped long before he asked why he 
Should do so. It has not been reflective deliberation 
about the truth and value of religion that has led most 
men to serve their gods, no weighing of reasons; but 
from the beginning men have worshiped because impulse 
and need, tradition and custom have urged them to it. 
“In their blindness,” uncritically, they have bowed down 
before whatever gods there were. 

In the twentieth century there are still worshipers. 
But there are also men who do not worship. If one may 
judge about such matters, these are many more than 
those who worship. Among educated people the number 
of worshipers appears to be less, if anything, than in the 
preceding century. Should one inquire into the grounds 
for the diminution of worship, the impartial investiga- 


WORSHIP 175 


tor would have to admit that they are on the whole fully 
aS nonrational as the original social and instinctive 
causes of worship. Worship seems to have gone out of 
fashion. Other arts, as Hocking has shown, have 
crowded out religion, their mother; the mode of the day 
fulfills the command, “Thou shalt not worship nor bow 
down.” 

Yet all the while, whether in fashion or out of fashion, 
worship has been either truly hurtful or truly helpful 
to the best interests of mankind. Religion has always 
taken for granted its own value. Yet the most ardent 
worshiper cannot deny that from time to time great 
spirits have arisen among men who, for reasons given, 
challenged that value and refused to bow the knee either 
to Baal or to Jehovah. “If there were gods,” cries 
Zarathustra, “how could I stand not being one?” An 
Auguste Comte regards belief in God as a stage of 
thought that must be superseded by positive scientific 
knowledge of matters of fact; yet he would save two 
legs or the piece of an ear of worship by making human- 
ity its object. But this isa halfway measure. A twenti- 
eth-century critic comments: “Humanity is not an 
object to be worshiped. The very attitude and implica- 
tions of worship must be relinquished. In their place 
must be put the spiritually founded virtue of loyalty to 
those efforts and values which elevate human beings 
and give a quality of nobility and significance to our 
human life here and now.”? For such critics of worship, 
God is dead. Worship, they assume, self-evidently gives 
no quality of nobility or significance to life. 

How, then, can a worshiper of sensitive mind avoid 
reflecting on his own experience in the face of such a 
challenge? “A just thinker,’ says Emerson, “will allow 





*R. W. Sellars, The Next Step in Religion (New York: The Mac- 
millan Company, 1918), p. 7. 


176 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


full swing to his skepticism. I dip my pen in the black- 
est ink because I am not afraid of falling into my ink- 
pot.” When we confront religious skepticism, no mere 
exercise in academic speculation is at stake; it is a ques- 
tion of whether the modern man wishes to achieve spirit- 
ual integrity. It is the duty of the religious man who 
wishes to preserve the values of religion, as well as of 
the philosopher who wishes to understand, not to take 
the experiences of religion thoughtlessly for granted but 
to reflect on them and evaluate them critically. 


3. WHAT WorSHIP IS NoT 


If we are to undertake the task of reflecting on the 
experience of worship, we must have some working 
notion of what worship is. It should be remembered 
that any definition that could be offered would be mean- 
ingless apart from the system of experience and thought 
of which it is the deposit. This is true of all definitions 
and especially of the definition of worship. To try to 
capture the life of it in a phrase is a bolder venture than 
it iS wise. 

Instead, then, of looking for a formal definition, it 
would perhaps be better for us to meditate for a while 
on some of the expressions of worship. This method 
may bring our study nearer to the spirit of Thomas a 
Kempis, who said, “Opto magis sentire compunctionem 
quam scire eius definitionem.”? 

In doing so we shall limit our thought chiefly to the 
higher types of worship among civilized man rather 
than to inquire curiously into origins or averages. 
Genetic studies have an important place which is at 





Worship,” in The Conduct of Life, etc. (Everyman’s Library), 
p. 248. 

*De imitatione Christi, I, 1. “I desire rather to feel compunction 
than to know its definition.” 


WORSHIP 177 


present in no danger of being overlooked; on the con- 
trary, there is need of reminding some students of reli- 
gion that the Bushmen of Australia are no better author- 
ities in the philosophy of worship than they are in the 
science of physics. The genetic method becomes an 
enemy of truth if it leads us to a prejudice in favor of 
origins and against mature development.* Likewise the 
statistical method, much in vogue at present, is, to say 
the least, not likely to yield any criterion of truth or 
value. The so-called questionnaire has its uses; it also 
has its limitations. The answers of ten thousand Sun- 
day-school teachers, normal-school pupils, college fresh- 
men, or professors, to questions about religion have 
about the same relation to the lofty heights of worship 
as the answers of the same number of limerick writers 
would have to the secret of poetic inspiration. In our 
study we shall not be looking for average levels, but for 
the secret place of the Most High. 

The ground may be cleared in a preliminary way by 
some negative considerations. Worship is not, as senti- 
mental religionists would often have it, the whole of life. 
Daily work and play, politics and business, science and 
art, are doubtless related to worship, but they are not 
themselves part of worship. Worship, then, is not the 
whole of life; and, it may be added, it is not even the 
whole of religion. Religion includes or causes much 
that is not worship. Brotherly service to our fellow men 
is believed by many to be a very important part of reli- 
gion; but to call it worship would be an instance of the 
pathetic fallacy. Worship is an inner posture of the 
individual, his attitude toward God. “Souls,” says 
Emerson,° “are not saved in bundles. The Spirit saith 





‘See G. A. Coe, Psychology of Religion (University of Chicago 
Press, 1916), p. 25. 
POD Clits) Di 204: 


178 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


to the man, ‘How is it with thee? thee personally? is it 
well? is it ill?’ ” Again, religion includes belief; but be- 
lief is not worship. Belief, it is true, is a necessary pre- 
supposition of worship. A worshiping unbeliever is im- 
possible. Man cannot worship his own ignorance; nor 
can utter mystery be a god, Herbert Spencer to the con- 
trary notwithstanding. The element of belief in some 
worship may, it is true, be very slight. It is probable, 
as we have said, that primitive cults arise apart from 
rational faith; but their ritual is not worship until the 
soul is in it and a god is believed in. Civilized man, cer- 
tainly, must believe in an object worthy of his worship 
before he can kneel and adore. But true as all this is, 
an act of belief is not an act of worship; it is the pre- 
condition but not the fruition of worship. 

Our thought will therefore at its present stage presup- 
pose belief in God. The history of religion among 
civilized races points to monotheism as the highest type 
of religious belief. Our study in Chapter VI vindicated 
it as the most adequate philosophy. For monotheism 
there is one God, a Supreme Person who is at the same 
time the Supreme Power and the Supreme Value in the ~ 
universe. Our discussion will work with this idea of 
God, without considering what worship would be if 
some other idea of God were believed. This will narrow 
our scope, but make the study more definite. Some idea, 
at all events, is a prerequisite to true worship; yet, let us 
repeat, no idea, however worthy, is itself worship. Sim- 
mel’s extraordinary definition of religion as “enthusias- 
tic apprehension of any content’’® will serve to remind 
us how barren religion becomes when the idea of God 
is omitted. But, important as it is, that idea is not 
religion. 

Nor should worship be confounded with its external 

‘Quoted by Max Scheler in Das Ewige im Menschen, p. 521. 


WORSHIP sre, 


manifestations. Ceremonies and rites as forms of be- 
havior are suitable objects for scientific investigation 
in this behavioristic age; but the behavior of a human 
organism or community must always be interpreted in 
the light of the conscious attitudes which the behavior 
expresses. Worship is never identical with its objective 
expression, but is always a conscious attitude of the 
worshiper to his god. Without a conscious attitude to 
God, no true worship is transacted. If the conscious 
attitude to God be feeble and meager, the worship is 
feeble and meager, whatever its external forms may be 
or whatever other values than worship may be present 
in the life. If the conscious attitude to God be vivid and 
rich, the worship is vivid and rich. This does not mean 
that rite without true worship is valueless, for it im- 
plants in the hidden recesses of the soul a background 
for the later fruition of worship; none the less, it re- 
mains true that cult is not worship. It is wholly instru- 
mental to conscious experience of God; it is quite liter- 
ally a “means of grace,” not grace itself, 


4. THE Four STAGES OF WorSHIP 


What, then, is the nature of worship? Of what atti- 
tudes does it consist? Attitudes we say, not attitude; 
for worship is no fixed or single point of consciousness. 
It is a stream which becomes deeper and often stiller as 
it flows, a life which begets life. From observation of 
its historic and present forms we find it to consist of 
reverent contemplation, revelation, communion, and 
fruition. If we thus single out its stages, it is not in- 
tended to give the impression that they are all separate 
and distinct from each other or that the order given rep- 
resents the constant or usual order of psychological de- 
velopment. Sometimes the stages seem to occur almost 
simultaneously. The point of importance is that each 


180 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


higher stage includes and presupposes those that pre- 
cede it on the list, and that all four attitudes are present 
in all fully developed worship. Contemplation, revela- 
tion, communion, and fruition are all essential. 

Contemplation is the first stage of worship. It is 
worship in its lowest terms; yet it involves more than 
belief in God. By contemplation is meant the fullest 
possible concentration of reverent attention on him. 
Man meditates on the mystery of a Creator who is also 
a Redeemer. As Richard Baxter quaintly puts it in the 
Saints’ Everlasting Rest, there is “the set and solemn 
acting of all the powers of thy soul in meditation upon 
thy everlasting rest.”” The soul may be silent before 
Jehovah in contemplation, or may break forth into 
praise and thanksgiving. 

But, however contemplation expresses itself, this 
stage of worship is incomplete without a higher. He 
who patiently waits upon the Lord finds that the Lord 
inclines unto him. Contemplation is followed by reve- 
lation. In contemplation man is seeking; in revelation 
God is giving. In contemplation man’s attitude is 
active; in revelation it is passive. Each is necessary for 
the normal fulfillment of the other. First, “I saw the 
Lord” ; then, ‘flew one of the seraphims unto me.” First, 
meditation under the bo tree; then, the illumination of 
Nirvana. 


“Who in heart not ever kneels 
Neither sinne nor Saviour feels.’’? 


Reverent contemplation fits us to receive God’s judg- 
ment of our character and of his. * 

Yet it would be an error to regard this revelation as 
the end of worship. The saint who aims only at il- 
lumination is not the perfected saint. The passive 





7G. Herbert, in “Business,” Herbert and Heber’s Poems, p. 96. 


WORSHIP 181 


recipient of revelation should become active again; yet 
now he does not return to mere contemplation, for he 
can enter into a mutual relation with the God who has 
revealed himself. This is most often expressed in 
prayer; but the practice of the presence of God may 
take many forms. Communion with God, then, differs 
from contemplation as fellowship with a present friend 
differs from thought about an absent one; for, although 
God is truly present to the mere contemplater, a God 
whose presence is not revealed is as good as absent. And 
a God revealed but unresponsive to our spirit’s need is 
as though he were not. The literature of devotion is 
full of expressions of the intimacy of communion with 
God and warnings against its possible loss. To quote 
Richard Baxter again, “Frequency in heavenly contem- 
plation is particularly important to prevent a shyness 
between God and thy soul.” 

Sometimes this shyness is so successfully broken down 
as to destroy reverent contemplation and to produce an 
undue familiarity, akin to that which in the end breeds 
contempt. The extremes of so-called gospel songs may 
be matched in the Pietistic movement of the seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries. Such “hymns” as the follow- 
ing were produced : 

“Call me, Oh call me, thy bride, 
Call me, I pray thee, thy dove; 
Bring me to thy dear side, 
Fill me with trusting love.” 


A production of twenty-three stanzas gave twenty-three 
attributes of Jesus in the following style: 
“Little Easter Lamb, how sweet, 
How sweet thy taste to me. 
Honey flowing from thy wounds 
Brings felicity. 
‘Op. cit., p. 339. 


182 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


Of thy grace my soul has boasted. 
Life sprang up when thou wert roasted!” 


Twenty-three stanzas of this would suffice to prevent 
shyness. 

It was such excesses in the Pietistic movement that 
led Ritschl to denounce all mysticism.? Nevertheless, 
it was Ritschl who said that “the fellowship which sin- 
ners may have with God is as close as that between the 
head and the members of a family,” and that “in the 
personal sanctuary of this peculiar knowledge of God, 
of the world, and of oneself, which consists more of 
states of feeling than of intellectual reflections, one is 
absolutely independent over against men; or, if not, one 
has not yet attained the enjoyment of reconciliation.” 
Communion with God thus gives man a sense of member- 
ship in an eternal spiritual whole that cannot fail; yet 
it is not the final stage of worship. 

God is too overwhelming for man to endure long the 
intense feeling of direct communion with him. Con- 
scious life is rhythmic, and attention must alternate, 
as Hocking has pointed out, between the whole and the 
part. This thought is allegorically expressed in a well- 
known passage in the Theologia Germanica (Chapter 
VW Lilet 


“Now the created soul of man hath also two eyes. The 
one is the power of seeing into eternity, the other of seeing 
into time and the creatures, of perceiving how they differ 
from each other as aforesaid, of giving life and needful 
things to the body, and ordering and governing it for the 
best. But these two eyes of the soul of man cannot both 
perform their work at once; but if the soul shall see with 
the right eye into eternity, then the left eye must close 


°Geschichte des Pietismus; where the hymns given in the text are 
also quoted, Vol. II, pp. 489, 491. The translations are by the present 
author. 

~Rechtfertigung und Verséhnung, Vol. III, pp. 94, 617. 


WORSHIP 183 


itself and refrain from working, and be as though it were 
dead. For if the left eye be fulfilling its office toward out- 
ward things, that is, holding converse with time and the 
creatures, then must the right eye be hindered in its work- 
ing; that is, in its contemplation. Therefore whosoever will 
have the one must let the other go, for ‘no man can serve 
two masters.’ ”’11 


But the mystic writer has gone to extremes in the 
separation of the functions. God and his world are not 
two utterly distinct universes. When the worshiping 
mind turns from its moments of direct communion with 
“the center and soul of every sphere” to a concern with 
our fragmentary human experiences, it carries to them 
the power of the Whole which draws them to itself. God 
is the magnetic pole of our spiritual universe; and, 
contrary to the old mystic, he gives meaning to our life 
in the world. 

Just as the mariner should not leave the lanes of navi- 
gation and flee to the pole, so the soul should not leave 
the world and flee to God. To be in the world yet 
not of it is the worshiper’s portion. He steers toward 
port through tempest and sunshine, his compass held 
steady by a power beyond the clouds and the very sun. 
Then at last within his soul there dawns the final stage 
of worship, which is fruition. Not the ecstasy of mystic 
communion but the fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, 
longsuffering, gentleness, faith, meekness, temperance— 
is the true goal of worship. These virtues when they 
grow out of a life of worship have a very different inner 
aspect than when they are cultivated for their own 
sakes. Fruits grow out of the life of the organism; so 
the fruit of the Spirit. As is the love of human person 
and human person, so is the love of human person and 





“Tr. by Winkworth in the Golden Treasury Series (London; Mac- 
millan & Co., 1893). 


184 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


divine person: first, contemplation of the Loved One; 
then revelation of the mysteries of the true nature of 
the Loved One; then, a communion of life; and, finally, . 
creation of new life, “birth in beauty,” as Plato calls it. 
This should not be taken to mean that the worship of 
God is merely a means to an end, a mere instrument to 
personal character or social sentiments or conduct; it 
means, rather, that, unless the end sought is one of 
which worship is both root and integral part, the human 
personality will never find its maturest fruition. 


5. TRANSITION TO THE NEXT CHAPTER 


Worship as it has just been described is worship at 
its best. But the actual average falls short of this ideal 
composite of selected experiences. Only a rare spirit 
in a rare moment truly worships as we have defined 
the act. Perhaps the mass of men never worship. Per- 
haps, indeed, enlightened men would not desire to wor- 
ship. Perhaps there is no room for worship in culture. 
Perhaps it is fantastic. There may be a God, but his 
existence may be a remote and barren fact. 

No mere description of the experience of worship 
could tell us whether worship is truly valuable. The 
worshiper must think his way through to a reasonable 
view of experience as a whole if he is to maintain his 
right and obligation to worship against all critics. Not 
only must he construct a positive view, but he must 
also face ultimate doubts about the value of worship 
before it can be his secure possession. If this is to be 
done, the sooner the better; hence the next chapter will 
consider these doubts; and the following one will in- 
quire into the creation of the fruit of the Spirit. 


CHAPTER VIII 
DOUBTS ABOUT THE VALUE OF WORSHIP 


1. THe PROBLEM OF THE CHAPTER 


WORSHIP, aS we have seen, is contemplation of God, 
revelation, communion (or supposed revelation and 
communion), and fruition. In this process of worship 
the religious man believes that he finds life’s highest 
value. For simplicity’s sake we may for the present 
waive consideration of whether our conclusion in Chap- 
ter VI that God really exists is valid or not. Let us, 
rather, scrutinize doubts about the value of the expe- 
rience of worship. Such doubts are fully as devastating 
as theoretical atheism; for, if philosophy and theology 
were to “prove” that there is a God, but experience were 
to find no true value in worship, this practical refuta- 
tion of faith would outweigh all theoretical proof. The 
life of religion depends upon the worth of worship. The 
value of worship, it is true, would not by itself justify 
the beliefs that accompany or sustain it. But the value- 
lessness of worship would destroy those beliefs beyond 
repair; and its value would be evidence for religious 
belief that might acquire logical force when interpreted 
in the light of a synoptic view of our whole human expe- 
rience. It is just as irrational to ignore real conse- 
quences as it is to fall into easy-going acceptance of 
results as a criterion of truth. 

Can worship survive doubt? That acts of worship are 
still satisfying to devout souls cannot be questioned ; 
but, if these souls paused a while to think, would they 
still be satisfied? Is worship reasonable? Some would 


say that one must not try to reason about such matters ; 
185 


186 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


they are too high for our wit. Oswald Spengler is their 
spokesman when he says, “The desire for system is the 
desire to kill the living” ;? that is, we should take life 
pragmatically as it comes, without trying to reason 
about it. Reason, Spengler thinks, is a foe to life. But 
if this way of thinking be applied to religion, the out- 
come is disastrous. Such a defense of worship is, in the 
end, a pessimistic and skeptical betrayal of what is 
most precious; for if there be ultimate warfare between 
life and logic, between worship and truth, God is not 
reasonable; in short, there is no God. The defense of 
religion by appeal to skepticism is treason within the 
camp. When a friend of religion can write, as one has 
written, that “the heart-hunger of the world to-day is 
not for a reasonable religion, as some would have us 
believe, but for a satisfying God,’’* it seems like a frank 
admission that there probably is in reality no God, and 
SO we may as well make one that suits us. It is not, 
then, altogether surprising that a Reinach can ironically 
define religion as “a collection of scruples that hinder 
the free exercise of our faculties.’ 

If worship is to deserve survival it must justify itself 
before reason. Can the modern man worship? Can he 
confront the whole wherein he lives and find there a 
God to adore? Or is man to-day so occupied with frac- 
tional living, with fragments of business, or art, or 
science, that he is impotent to worship? Must he always 
fail to see the forest for the trees? Was Mehlis right 
when he judged that culture is dying of its own beauty? 
Is there no beauty that is both truly adorable and per- 
manent? Must the busy present veil the object of wor- 





‘Der Untergang des Abendlandes, (1st-15th ed., Munich: Beck, 
1922), Vol. 11, p. 16. 

*H. L. Pell in The Christian Advocate, 99 (1924), p. 1553. 

*Reinach, Orpheus, p. 4. Cited Hre, Vol, XXII, p. 756b. 


DOUBTS ABOUT WORSHIP 187 


ship, the God in whose hand are past and future, present 
and eternity? 

Our problem in its most general form is well stated 
by Willa Cather. “Life,” she says, “was so short that 
it meant nothing at all unless it were continually rein- 
forced by something that endured; unless the shadows 
of individual existence came and went against a back- 
ground that held together.‘ Is it possible, we ask, in 
the experience of worship truly to find such a back- 
ground, or does worship fail us? This is the doubt that 
we must face. 


2. Tur DIALECTIC OF DouBT 


Doubts are many. There are doubts of blank ignor- 
ance and doubts of dull incompetency, doubts of per- 
versity and doubts of temperament and mood. All of 
these doubts are below the level of reason and are both 
unworthy and incapable of a rational refutation. Not 
reason but enlarged experience or the gift of a new 
intellect is their sole refutation. We shall pass by these 
unreflective stages of doubt in order to grapple with 
the deeper questions raised by a reflective doubt. 

When thought once begins to criticize, doubts spring 
up like weeds on every side. There is a wild luxuriance, 
a seemingly planless productivity of doubt. Yet, just as 
there are laws of biology to be found in the growth of 
the rankest weeds, so laws of reason are discoverable at 
work in doubt. Rational doubt about any objeet always 
reveals some truth both about that object and about 
reason itself. Hence, out of the apparently meaningless 
profusion of doubts about worship in the modern mind 
it is probable that some rational meaning can be con- 
structed. Perhaps the ungainly fragments may be fitted 
to each other as in a puzzle-picture, so that, when all our 

‘One of Ours (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1922), p. 406. 


188 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


doubts are put together, they will be seen both to refute 
their own character as doubts and also to contribute 
something to the picture of the whole life of true wor- 
Ship. If this be true, the real danger to worship lies far 
less in systematic and thorough doubt than in random 
doubting, which is merely analytic or partial. When 
all our doubts are seen together, synoptically, they will 
experience a change and become a rational vision of 
faith. If you doubt thoroughly, your doubts will answer 
each other. Emerson expressed this conviction most 
vigorously in his essay on Worship. “If the Divine 
Providence,” he says, “has hid from men neither disease, 
nor deformity, nor corrupt society, but has stated itself 
out in passions, in war, in trade, in the love of power 
and pleasure, in hunger and need, in tyrannies, litera- 
tures, and arts—let us not be so nice that we cannot 
write these facts down coarsely as they stand, or doubt 
but there is a counter-statement as ponderous, which we 
can arrive at, and which, being put, will make all 
square.’’® 

Doubt, then, has a dialectic structure that keeps our 
reason restless until it finds both reason and rest in 
God. ach doubt leads to a contradictory doubt that 
cancels it and thus rises to a higher faith. Only by fac- 
ing our doubts fully may we see beyond them and attain 
faith that is really “the substance of things hoped for.” 
Perhaps Bacon was right when he said, “In contem- 
plation, if a man begin with certainties, he shall end 
in doubts; but if he be content to begin with doubts, he 
Shall end in certainties.” To the words of Bacon should 
be added the profound advice of Boehme: “Now it be- 
hooves the wise seeker to consider the whole process.”’® 
Each thesis of doubt, as Hegel might say, generates its 





‘The Conduct of Life, etc., p. 248. 
‘Signature of All Things, etc. (Everyman’s Library), p. 64. 


DOUBTS ABOUT WORSHIP 189 


antithesis; and out of their opposition arises a syn- 
thesis, which in turn generates new oppositions until a 
view of the whole is reached in which there is an in- 
clusive vision of experience that is completely coherent. 


3 First TueEsis: Dousr ABOUT CONTEMPLATION: “ALL 
Is WITHIN” 


How shall we go about our task of doubting thor- 
oughly? There is no royal road to the discovery of truth. 
In any problem the prescription is to start where we are 
and think from chaos toward order. For our present 
purpose it may be useful to try to discover the progress 
of the dialectic of doubt through an examination of the 
four stages which have been described, namely, reverent 
contemplation, revelation, communion, and fruition. 

Our starting point, then, will be doubt about contem- 
plation. Worship begins with solemn thought about 
God, meditation on his supreme excellence. But 
thought, says the doubter, is mere human reasoning and 
opinion which easily becomes overcertain of itself and 
eventuates in dubious creeds. Contemplation of God is 
thus at best no more than reliance on our reasoned opin- 
ions; at worst it descends to the deification of our dog- 
mas. “Orthodoxy,” as Herrmann used to say, “is too 
rationalistic.””’ Hinduism illustrates the danger of a 
sterile contemplation that ends in itself. To quote a 
modern Hindu writing: “If a man be skilled in words 
and learned, let him compose histories of the Holy One. 
.. . Often hath it been said to such an one, ‘Cleanse 
thy voice and thy heart by telling of the glory of the 
Holy One,’ and this one will give answer, ‘Sir, I am 
busy describing the doctrine of the identity of the uni- 
verse with the deity.’ Some Christians might judge 


™N. Macnicol, Indian Theism (London: Milford, 1915), p. 218. 
From the Bhakta-kalpadruma (1866). 


190 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


that the peril from such intellectualism is not confined 
to Hindus. 

The doubter who complains of the rationalism and 
dogmatism of religion is right in so far as he sees that 
religious worship rests on rational belief; but he is 
wrong in his inference from that fact. He supposes that, 
because the truth and value of worship depend on be- 
lieving certain human ideas, therefore worship is only 
a play of human fancy or—to borrow a term from psy- 
chology—mere rationalization. Because worship is con- 
templation he argues that it is all within. This doubt 
arises from isolating the moment of contemplation, cut- 
ting off its meaning from experience as a whole, and 
Staring at the artificial abstraction thus created. Idea, 
any idea, apart from its meaning is all within; believing 
as a psychological process is merely subjective. But if 
worship is to be condemned on this ground, then all be- 
liefs about everything, from the objects that I see before 
me to mathematical truths, from tar-water to God, must 
fall in one and the same ruin. If worship is worthless 
because it requires ideas in our minds, then all expe- 
rience is worthless and life is vain. Such doubt forgets 
that ideas are to be condemned as false not merely be- 
cause they are in our minds but solely because they are 
unreasonable. Contemplation cannot justly be rejected 
merely because it is contemplation. It must, rather, be 
tested by its power to interpret the objects that we expe- 
rience; the within stands or falls by its power to medi- 
ate what is beyond. 


4. First ANTITHESIS: Dousr ABOUT REVELATION: 
“ALL Is BRryonp”’ 


Worship asserts its virtue when thus tested, for con- 
templation yields revelation. He who meditates on God 
finds that there is revealed to him more than his own 


DOUBTS ABOUT WORSHIP 191 


reasonings could ever produce. The “numinous” maj- 
esty of the Almighty, his exalted righteousness, his pity- 
ing and healing love, the beauty of his holiness are in 
due season revealed to the worshiper who seeks him. In 
the presence of these transcendent revelations he ex- 
claims: “What am I but what I have received?... 
I believe because it is absurd!’ He is conscious of hay- 
ing found something that is quite beyond his native 
powers to produce. For many souls this phase of wor- 
ship is overwhelming; and it has produced extremes of 
experience and doctrine. Implicit, blind faith; unques- 
tioning belief in authoritative creeds as containing the 
essence of revelation; acceptance of tradition or Scrip- 
ture as final standard, fear and distrust of science and 
philosophy—these are some of the bitter fruits of the 
overvaluing of the experience of revelation. For good 
or ill, the experience is a power in life. 

Such fruit comforts and sustains the soul of many a 
worshiper. To the average man it is the bread of life 
delivered at the front door. But, like the little book of 
the Apocalypse, though sweet as honey in the mouth, it 
is bitter in the belly. When worship tarries passively 
at the moment of revelation, and the reason prays, “Oh 
to be nothing, nothing!” the doubter is always on hand 
gleefully commenting on answered prayer. He has, 
moreover, won no mere victory of satire. If worship be 
nothing but a passive recipience of revelation apart from 
any rational belief in a moral and personal God, our God 
is, as Rudolph Otto recently remarked, a mere idol. 
The worshiper who lingers too long at this stage of 
worship says in effect, “All is beyond,” and thus cuts off 
God as effectively as the mere contemplator who says, 
“All is within.” The errors of ultraconservative the- 
ology arise mostly from persisting in this antithesis. 
Revelation is not the whole of worship. 


AV RELIGIOUS VALUES 


5. First SYNTHESIS: COMMUNION: “THE BEYOND THAT 
Is WITHIN” 


There is, we must admit, a thoroughly justified doubt 
about any worship that is either mere subjective con- 
templation of one’s own ideas, or mere passive accept- 
ance of a supposed revelation, no matter what that reve- 
lation may be. The position of the mere rationalist and 
that of the mere authoritarian are equally false both to 
reason and to worship. On the other hand, each makes 
an essential contribution. Without reverent and ra- 
tional contemplation within the mind worship is mere 
mummery. Without revelation from beyond the mind 
worship is a groping that does not find, a looking that 
does not see. What is needed, therefore, is the deepen- 
ing of worship that arises in conscious communion be- 
tween the contemplating worshiper and the revealing 
God. We seek not alone the within of contemplation nor 
the beyond of revelation but, rather, in the beautiful 
phrase of Rufus M. Jones, “the beyond that is within,” 
a God whom we can find through our own inner life, yet 
who is infinitely more than our experience of him. 


6. SECOND THESIS: Dousr ABOUT COMMUNION: 
“ALL IS FEELING” 
VETSUS 


SECOND ANTITHESIS: Dousr ABOUT FRUITION: 
“Ati Is BEHAVIOR” 


Although communion is a solution of the doubts pro- 
voked by the defects of contemplation and revelation, 
it is itself not final. It leads to the consummation of 
worship in fruition. Neither can be fully appreciated 
without the other nor without the inferior stages of 
contemplation and revelation. Communion is a deep- 


DOUBTS ABOUT WORSHIP 193 


ened and personalized contemplation; fruition is the in- 
terpretation in life of the divine revelation, the coopera- 
tive product of God and man. 

But at each of the stages of worship doubt arises. 
Against contemplation the reproach was brought, All 
is within and hence worship is subjective. Against 
revelation it was said, All is beyond and hence worship 
is irrational and therefore unattainable for the think- 
ing man. Likewise the higher stages of worship are 
doubted. Of communion it may be said, All is feeling, 
and hence worship, although attainable, yet is irra- 
tional. Against fruition the accusation runs, All is be- 
havior, and hence God is superfluous; the Golden Rule 
suffices without the golden streets; supernatural sanc- 
tions are unnecessary. | 

The doubts that grow out of the belief that commu- 
nion is mere feeling and fruition mere behavior are as 
complicated as are human nature and civilization. We 
must be content therefore with a bird’s-eye view of these 
doubts. 

When the doubter hears it said that worship is com- 
munion with God, his comment is ready to hand. Com- 
munion? What is this but mere emotional mysticism? 
Is it not a mere surrender of rational self-control in the 
interests of lawless feeling? Is it not pure subjectivism 
on a far lower plane than that of rational contempla- 
tion? On the other hand, when this same doubter looks 
for the fruition of mystical experience in behavior, he 
may say that worship reduces to a few forms and cere- 
monies. Worship is socially expressed as ritual; and 
ritualism is mere externalism. Thus, worship as com- 
munion is too inner; as fruition, too external. Its 
value is therefore doubly doubtful. 

Two tendencies in the intellectual world will serve 
to illuminate the twin doubts that have just been men- 


194 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


tioned, namely, psychoanalysis and the social interpre- 
tation of religion. An instructive popular exposition of 
the psychoanalytic view of worship has recently ap- 
peared in Mr. EK. D. Martin’s book, The Mystery of Re- 
ligion.® For this type of thinking, the essence of reli- 
gion lies in the reconciliation of man with the heavenly 
Father. Who, then, is this heavenly Father who reveals 
himself to us as the forgiver of sins? Well, he and all of 
religion are but the “symbolic expression of our wish 
that the universe were run in our interest.” God is sim- 
ply a “Father-complex” of the general type familiar to 
the psychoanalyst. The Father-complex is a defense 
mechanism that enables man “to forgive his own sins by 
conceiving of them as having been forgiven by the 
Iather.” Animal sacrifice provides the emotional shock 
necessary to break the emotional fixation upon the ac- 
tual parent. This is, of course, thoroughgoing sub- 
jectivism. Religion is “the solution of conflicts which 
le wholly within the psyche.” “We must,” says Mr. 
Martin, in Vaihinger’s spirit yet on very different 
grounds, “find the meaning and value of our lives in 
fiction and illusion.”® We have here a point of view 
which, so far as the object of worship is concerned, may 
well be called psychoanalytic solipsism. For it, religion 
is a purely subjective transaction. 

Over against this view of worship as communion with 
our own Father-complex may be set what has been called 
the Uncle Sam theory of God. Instead of looking within 
and below consciousness, as do the psychoanalysts, a 
numerous school of writers look out toward the social 
fruits of religion. These men—Durkheim, Ames, King, 
Haydon, and many others more or less influenced by 


‘New York: Harper & Brothers, 1924. 
POD Cte.” Dp./99, 192, 217, 834330: 





DOUBTS ABOUT WORSHIP 195 


Auguste Comte—all define religion as group conscious: 
ness or social mind of some sort. What religion ex- 
presses, these men believe, is the solidarity of some hu- 
man group; humanity is the Supreme Being; God is the 
social mind, “the idealizing Social Will, or Spirit of the 
Group,” as E. S. Ames phrases it.1° A representative of 
this view is said to have remarked that organized cheer- 
ing on the football field is a religious experience, be- 
cause social. It is, then, not a captious caricature to 
call this the Uncle Sam theory or to describe it as social 
solipsism. 

It would be no lover of truth who would damn psycho- 
analysis and positivism with a label and cast them thus 
to one side. There is a real truth in each. Psycho- 
analysis reveals some of the individual and subjective 
roots of worship, and shows the need and value of sym- 
bolism. It recognizes the great truth that, as Mr. Mar- 
tin remarks, “there is a sense in which each man, if 
left alone, would be religious in his own way.’ It 
explores the hidden depths of the soul. Likewise, social 
positivism contributes to truth. It teaches the frag- 
mentary character of worship that centers about God 
and me instead of about God and us; the absurdity of 
a God who is God of the individual and not of society. 
It has only scorn for the idea of God as a guardian 
angel for the individual; a guardian angel is verily no 
God. 

As a corrective to gross externalism and superficiality, 
psychoanalysis is valuable; as a corrective to excessive 
individualism in worship, the social view has a function; 
but as the whole truth each refutes the other. Worship 
is neither wholly inner psychic struggles nor is it wholly 
external social relations. 


Jour. Rel., 1 (1921), p. 468. 
“Op. cit., p. 342. 


196 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


¢. THirp THESIS oF Dousts: “COMMUNION IS BEYOND 
GOOD AND EVIL” 
Versus 
THIRD ANTITHESIS: “FRUITION IS A FANATICAL 
ASSERTION OF MORALITY” 


We have found that the second thesis and antithesis 
refute each other, but we have not yet found the syn- 
thesis which solves their contradiction. While we are 
waiting for this synthesis to appear another conflict may 
engage our attention. No thoughtful reader of this book 
(and especially of Chapter II) could overlook the 
problem of the relations of worship to the moral life. 
This problem is also suggested by our consideration of 
the social aspects of religion. It is of pressing theo- 
retical and practical importance. Here, too, doubts 
-and apparent contradictions multiply. The experience 
of the communion of the worshiper with his God does 
not bear on its face the majesty of the moral law; it 
seems to be experience of a different order. In the aver- 
age religious group some will be found who seem to have 
mystical communion of a sort, but whose moral charac- 
ter is dubious. The one does not necessarily involve the 
other. In moral experience will is the central fact; in 
communion, feeling. The moral man is active; the com- 
muning worshiper receives from God infinitely more 
than he gives. The worshiper’s conviction is expressed 
by Sadhu Sundar Singh, “The wonderful peace which 
the man of prayer feels while praying is not the result 
of his own imagination or thought, but is the outcome 
of the presence of God in the soul.’??, Communion with 
God seems to carry the worshiper beyond himself, even, 
perchance, into realms beyond good and evil. Good and 





“Reality and Religion (New York: The Macmillan Company, 
1924), p. 8. 


DOUBTS ABOUT WORSHIP 197 


evil are human categories, it is sometimes felt; when 
God speaks, human judgment is stilled. 

Here the voice of the doubter is raised. If communion 
carries the mystic to a point where moral categories fail, 
the doubter asks, what becomes of the moral life while 
worship is going on, and what effect does such worship 
have on morality? If the mystic is a Stage superior to 
the moral, as many mystics have held, may not the ar- 
dent worshiper not only feel a contemptus mundi but 
even come to acquire a contempt for morality itself as 
mere works without that blessed mystery called faith? 
Has he not described morality as of no avail for salva- 
tion—yes, as filthy rags? Does not pursuit of the infin- 
ite rainbow lead men to contemn. goodness, the rarest 
jewel of our finite lives? If the doubter be persistent, 
he will point out that many a worshiper has seemed to 
glory in the surrender of self-respect, describing him- 
Self as a very worm of the dust. Communion with God, 
he will conclude, discourages morality and humiliates 
the soul. The net result of this aspect of religion is 
(so Karl Marx thinks) that it becomes the “opiate of 
the people.” 

The same idea is often expressed by calling religion 
other-worldly. The theme of religion has often been, 
“I am a stranger here, heaven is my home.” The history 
of asceticism is largely a history of withdrawal from 
active life here for the sake of supposed benefits here- 
after. God and eternity may become the sole object of 
real interest. “Ht ipsa ist beata vita, gaudere de te, ad te, 
propter te; ipsa est et non est altera”’%—“This is the 
blessed life—to rejoice about thee, unto thee, because of 
thee; this is the blessed life indeed and there is no 
other.” But if there be literally no other interest in 





*Augustine, Conf., X, 32. 


198 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


life than God, the outcome is an empty and barren wor- 
ship as well as the destruction of normal life. Com- 
munion with a God who is wholly of another world cuts 
the nerve of life in this world. 

These doubts would perhaps prove annihilating were 
it not for a set of opposing doubts that arise when we 
face the fruition of worship in life. Is the worshiper, 
as some think, beyond good and evil? Then why is it 
that a Jesus, a Paul, a Calvin, a Gandhi are so loyal to 
their moral perceptions as to occasion the charge that 
religion is hyperconscientious? Does communion with 
the Eternal humiliate man? Why then does he who has 
met the Lord go forth exalted, with convictions so in- 
tense that he seems to identify his own will with that of 
the Almighty, and elicits from those less religious than 
himself the judgment that he is extremely self-assertive? 
Is Karl Marx right in saying that religion is an opiate 
of the people? Then why have so many prophets of past 
and present been social revolutionaries, striving for the 
true brotherhood of mankind? No more disturbing foe 
to social injustice has ever entered human history than 
the worshiper’s faith that God, the all-Father, is love. 
Or, is it true that worship is other-worldly? If so, why 
Oliver Cromwell, John Calvin, John Wesley, the Salva- 
tion Army, and the Pope of Rome? Why is there so 
much force in the counterdoubt which criticizes the wor- 
Shiper on account of his undue concern for temporal 
power and his zeal to set right all that now is in the 
conduct of social life, becoming Puritanic censor of 


“all that I think, 
Yea, even of wretched meat and drink”? 


Those, then, who doubt worship because communion is 
deficient in morality are met by those who doubt it be- 
cause its fruition suffers from an excess of morality, 


DOUBTS ABOUT WORSHIP 199 


a surplus of activity. Far from disregarding mor ality, 
it is almost fanatically moral. These doubts, taken to- 
gether, are a tribute to the balance and comprehensive- 
ness of true worship. They show that the worshiper is 
a citizen of two worlds, and that his experience unites 
and perfects the essence of each. 


8. FINAL SYNTHESIS: WORSHIP AS CONSCIOUS RELATION 
OF THE WHOLE PERSONALITY TO Gop 


Communion is doubted, we said, because it holds, or is 
believed to hold, that all is feeling. The fruition of 
worship in conduct occasions doubt because it appears 
to assert that all is behavior. But if anything stands 
out clearly in the actual commerce of the soul with God, 
it is that neither a mere feeling of communion nor any 
form of behavior (however socialized or democratized 
it may be) is the goal of religion. The nature of the true 
fruit of worship is foreshadowed in the defects of its 
partial forms. Complete worship will engage the com- 
plete personality of man, not his feelings alone, nor his 
conduct. The doubts that have been raised about the 
fruition of worship were permissible and necessary just 
because that fruition was regarded as mere behavior. 
The true fruition of worship is found in the develop- 
ment of the whole personality, which finds itself and 
realizes itself through a consciousness of its relations 
to God. Keats and Bosanquet are right; this world is 
“a vale of soul-making.”’ 

Can the value of personality as the worthy fruit of 
worship be doubted? This is the ultimate question 
about the value of religion. Personality, it may be re- 
plied, when fully itself, conscious of its ideals and rela- 
tions, living in harmony with God, is self-justifying. 
It is what we mean by value. The doubter who ques- 
tions the value of personality does more than he intends 


200 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


to do; for he not only denies the worth of worship, but 
he denies all value whatever, even the value of doubt 
and so of his own question. Thus, at last, worship is 
self-justifying because it brings life to a coherent whole; 
doubt, self-destroying because in contradicting worship 
it contradicts all else, including itself. 

Doubt, then, moves on toward truth, as all life, when 
sound, seeks higher levels. The thought of this move- 
ment of life is fittingly expressed in the lines of Father 
John Bannister Tabb: 


“Out of the dust a shadow, 

Then, a spark; 

Out of the cloud a silence, 
Then, a lark; 

Out of the heart a rapture, 
Then, a pain; 

Out of the dead, cold ashes, 
Life again.’’!4 


9. SURVEY OF THE CHAPTER 


When the self-refuting character of these doubts is 
seen, they seem almost too absurd to be real. Why, one 
may ask, do men not see it so? This is equivalent to 
asking why everyone does not live a complete life in the 
clear light of reason. Why, indeed? But there can be 
no question of the fact. Such doubts are entertained. 
Men stop short not alone of the unattainable Absolute 
but even of the whole truth that is within their grasp. 
It is no marvel that this is true, since worshipers them- 
selves give occasion to the doubter. The worshiper who 
tarries in contemplation and does not press on to receive 
revelation, or who accepts revelation but does not seek 
communion, or who enjoys communion without looking 
for fruition, or who is satisfied with fruition in conduct 





“From Norman Ault, The Poets’ Life of Christ (London: Milford, 
1922), p. 118. 


DOUBTS ABOUT WORSHIP 201 


without nourishing the total personality which is both 
root and fruit of good conduct, such a worshiper gives 
rise to the doubter who sees maimed and imperfect wor- 
ship going on before his very eyes. This, he says, is 
what worship is; and it is not good. Fractional worship 
begets fractional doubting. Total worship challenges 
total doubt; but total doubt, while we doubt, refutes 
itself and turns again into faith. 

The worshiper, however, is not to be too severely cen- 
sured for these his defects. Many of them are due, it is 
true, to unspiritual causes, some of which might be re- 
moved were he willing to seek the Lord with a whole 
heart. But many of those excesses are due to the very 
value of worship. Every element and phase of the pil- 
grim’s progress toward the Celestial City of the Spirit 
is so precious that, like the lover who is overcome with 
joy in the presence of a single lock of his lady’s hair, 
the worshiper lingers lovingly in contemplation or reve- 
lation, communion or conduct, and gives to the part the 
value that rightly belongs only to the whole. Worship, 
as we have seen, is a process that leads from moment 
to moment until the whole is attained. Every moment 
is indeed precious; but woe to the worshiper who forgets 
that only to him that believeth is the preciousness, be- 
lieveth, that is, in a whole God to whom the whole wor- 
ship of the whole personality is due! Woe to him whose 
partisanship for one element makes him an enemy of 
the whole! Woe to dogmatist and moralist, intellectual- 
ist and zsthetic, woe to solipsists, whether psycho- 
analytic or social! 

We return, then, to the thought of God. If there is to 
be a revival of worship in the modern world, it will come 
in large part through a revival of thought about God. 
This means no return to a barren intellectualism. 
Among worshipers not uniformity but unanimity is the 


202 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


need; not one form of cult or of dogma, but one spirit. 
Yet the one spirit is itself an empty form unless it mean 
devotion to a common cause, the cause of God among 
men. Without the idea of God the spirit of worship 
perishes. And it must be added that not every idea of 
God is worship-inspiring. God as Father-complex needs 
not worship but psychotherapy; God as social mind 
needs the United Charities; God as occasional doer of 
this or that, miracle-worker and inhabiter of sacred 
buildings, demands the incantations of the medicine 
man; but God as immanent Spirit of the whole universe, 
Creator and Redeemer, inexhaustible Person—this God 
invites the rich adventure of the soul that we call wor- 
ship. Such a God as this I believe to be real; far more 
real than any human idea about him. The worshiper 
who has found fruition will recall that there are many 
stages of worship, many roads to God, and he will not 
fear lest God and his world may become estranged if 
God does not chance to be in the center of to-day’s fash- 
ion of thinking. God lets himself be found afresh in 
many ways; but he always lets himself be found. 


CHAPTER [xX 
WORSHIP AS CREATIVITY 


1. THE PROBLEM OF THE CHAPTER 


WorsHiP we have found to be a process that includes 
reverent contemplation of God, the receiving of some 
revelation from him, the experience of communion with 
him, and a consequent fruition of personality—the fruit 
of the Spirit, a new birth. 

It is this new life that is the true goal of worship and 
the essential value of religion. If worship be truly con- 
summatory (to borrow a term of John Dewey’s), it is 
an experience worthy the loyalty of a man or a God. It 
is perhaps as near to the secret of the purpose of man’s 
existence as we are likely to come. The claims of reli- 
gion, then, are transcendent. 

Precisely because so much is at stake it is imperative 
to scrutinize those claims most narrowly. The boasted 
prerogative of religion is its power to save. What does 
the saved life come to? Does worship truly yield its 
fruit in its season—the human being redeemed and 
transformed? On the title page of the English transla- 
tion of the Theologia Germanica that book is described 
as one which “setteth forth many fair lineaments of 
divine truth and saith very lofty and lovely things 
touching a perfect life.” ‘Lofty and lovely things”—are 
they the genuine experience of the worshiper? “Glori- 
ous things of Thee are spoken”—but what is the reality 
in experience to which these glowing words refer? 

Worship is the inner shrine of religion. Religion can- 


not be assured of its right to a perpetual place in human 
203 


204 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


experience unless worship have an intrinsic value of 
its own. The T'heologia Germanica puts the case force- 
fully: 


That which is best should be the dearest of all things to 
us; and in our love of it, neither helpfulness nor unhelpful- 
ness, advantage nor injury, gain nor loss, honor nor dis- 
honor, praise nor blame, nor anything of the kind should be 
regarded; but what is the noblest and best of all things 
should also be the dearest of all things, and that for no other 
cause than that it is the noblest and best.1 


Here is a Christian idealism willing to count all things 
loss for Christ, an idealism beside which our cautious 
utilitarian pragmatisms stand revealed as tawdry tinsel. 

Religion will always lead a precarious existence if it 
be regarded merely as a means to other ends, social, 
esthetic, hygienic, or what you please. ‘Those ends 
might be attained in some other way; in which case the 
Services of religion would be no longer required. It 
would be superfluous. “’Tis certain,’ says Emerson,? 
“that worship stands in some commanding relation to 
the health of man, and to his highest powers, so as to be, 
in some manner, the source of intellect.” It is doubtless 
true, as Emerson believes, that worship stimulates in- 
tellect ; but even though worship were hitherto the sole 
source of intellectual health, this fact would not guaran- 
tee the place of worship for the future. Intellect might 
at any time issue a declaration of independence. 

If religion is to be worth having, it must produce 
some value of its own; within its own domain it must 
exercise creative power. He who faces God must say 
with the prophet, “Woe is me,” and with the apostle, 
“Wretched man that I am,” when he measures himself 
with the measuring-rod of God. If there be no cleansing 


PChap.wVisips 17; 
°The Conduct of Life (Everyman’s Library), p. 255. 





CREATIVE WORSHIP 205 


fire, no redeeming Lord, that is, no unique work of grace, 
worship can only be a source of deeper despair or (at 
best) of self-deception. But he who observes the facts 
of religious life, wherever the religious experiment has 
been made in good faith, cannot doubt that something 
has been created in the human soul that is felt to be of 
infinite value. ‘When the true Love and True Light are 
in a man, the Perfect Good is known and loved for itself 
and as itself.”* The author of Theologia Germanica 
had no doubt about the creativity of worship. What, 
then, is the spiritual treasure that is created by the wor- 
ship of God? To a consideration of this problem we 
Shall address ourselves in the present chapter. 


2. A CREATIVE UNIVERSE 


The problem of creation has always been of interest 
to religion. God is usually regarded as the Creator. 
But theology has tended to stifle the very life of divine 
creativity by making creation a prerogative of the 
Almighty exercised once and for all long ago, and quite 
beyond the range of present human experience or under- 
standing. 

Yet if we are to say anything whatever about crea- 
tion, it must be as an interpretation of human experi- 
ence as we know it. All that we can say of God or man 
or nature is inevitably such an interpretation. If crea- 
tion be something utterly remote, utterly unlike any- 
thing that we have experienced or known, all that may 
be said on the subject is mere elaboration of ignorance. 
If, however, creation be revealed as a fact of our con- 
Scious experience and of the world in which we live, 
then we have some clew to the creative Spirit of God 
who brooded on the face of the waters. 

A creative God is the only sort of God worthy of wor- 

*Theologia Germanica, Chap. XLIII, p. 167, Eng. tr. 


206 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


ship. A God who has already done all that he proposes 
to do and has left the universe in its present state may 
be an object of compassion or of upbraiding; certainly 
not of worship. A God who can change nothing, bring 
nothing into being, create no new life, is a pitiable thing 
—scarcely a God at all. Yet such a God has been the 
residual Deity deposited by the mechanistic philosophy 
which has been the official doctrine in many quarters 
since the waning of idealistic influences in the middle 
of the nineteenth century. Such a God is not worth 
worshiping. So long as we believe that we live in a uni- 
verse from which genuine novelty is excluded, the whole 
enterprise of worship must, if we are conscious of the 
implications of our own thinking, appear as futile self- 
deception. 

Modern thought, long in the bondage of this mechan- 
ism which denies all novelty, has been awakening to the 
central importance of such facts as change, variation, 
growth, and freedom. ‘The theory of evolution, once 
held to eliminate the Creator, is now seen to be patent 
evidence of a creative force at work. When L. P. Jacks 
calls this a Living Uniwerse, or H. A. Youtz writes of 
“creative personality” in a cosmos in which the spiritual 
is Supreme, or William Temple speaks of Mens Creatria, 
“Mind the Creator,” these men are epitomizing the 
newer insight that is coming to supersede mechanistic 
interpretations of experience. 

If the universe be truly creative, it is, insofar forth, 
congenial to worship. It is the sort of universe that 
worship takes it to be. We must, therefore, if we desire 
secure intellectual foundations for our thought about 
worship, consider some of the currents of thought that 
are friendly to the idea of creativity. 

Bergson’s Creative Evolution (1907) comes to mind 
at once as the modern classic of this point of view. The 


CREATIVE WORSHIP 207 


world, he holds, is not a finished product but is in the 
making, being created constantly. Pragmatism, too, 
sounder in some of its metaphysical insights than in its 
doctrine of truth, has been a steady foe to any sort of 
block universe, and a friend of hope and novelty and 
freedom. Mr. Schiller expressed this aspect of prag- 
matism rather vividly in his presidential address before 
the Aristotelian Society (1921) on “Novelty.” John 
Dewey and his collaborators wrote a volume called 
Creative Intelligence (1917), in which, it is true, “‘intel- 
ligence” has a special and restricted meaning, but which, 
none the less, dwells on its creative function. 

It would, however, be a provincial error to suppose 
that interest in creativity is confined to Bergsonians and 
pragmatists. In many forms and sometimes in unex- 
pected quarters the principle finds repeated expression. 
Wundt’s doctrine of the creative resultant and his belief 
that spiritual energy tends to increase both imply crea- 
tivity. One of the most original and influential of recent 
books on metaphysics (already discussed briefly in 
Chapter VI) is S. Alexander’s Space, Time, and Deity 
(1920). For Alexander, Space and Time are the ulti- 
mate stuff of reality; but his real interest is in the move- 
ment of reality to higher levels rather than in this 
Space-Time stuff. This movement is creative; it is a 
cosmic process which strives toward the production of 
higher and higher qualities, new and better levels of 
existence. To this creative aspect of the cosmos he gives 
the name deity. Lloyd Morgan in his Hmergent Hvolu- 
tion (1923) has continued and synthesized the work of 
Bergson and Alexander, setting forth at large the evi- 
dence for the emergence of new qualities, that is, for 
real creation, in the world of our experience. 

The renewal of confidence in human freedom is an- 
other fact to be taken in this connection. The advocacy 


208 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


of freedom by Bergson, James, Royce, and Bowne has 
long been familiar. In the past few years writers so 
diverse as Miiller-Freienfels, the German irrationalist, 
and Spaulding, author of The New Rationalism (1918), 
have alike defended freedom. Charles Peirce’s writ- 
ings on the subject have lately been made more ayail- 
able and influential by the publication of Chance, Love, 
and Logic (1923). Louis Arnaud Reid has shown the 
relations of reason and freedom in the Monist, 34 
(1924), p. 528. | 
For our purpose the position of William McDougall 
is particularly instructive, since he rests the defense 
of freedom on the fact that mind creates. “That the 
human mind, in its highest flights, creates new things,” 
says McDougall,* “thinks in ways that have never been 
thought before, seems undeniable in face of any of the 
great works of genius. . . . Why should we doubt that 
organic evolution is a creative process and that Mind 
is the creative agency?” Sorley has written that “the 
self is the cause of its own actions; and each action, 
although connected with the past, is yet a true choice 
determined by itself, a true creation.”® The relations of 
purpose, freedom, and creativity are also brought out 
in the book by Edgar Pierce called The Philosophy of 
Character (1924). Jung, the psychoanalyst, brings sup- 
port to belief in freedom from his very different 
approach. ODriesch’s Metaphysik (1924), a concise 
exposition of his present view, makes the doctrine of 
freedom a cornerstone of his system. It is true that 
Driesch interprets it as mere “Jasagen” or ““Neinsagen” 
to a content which is determined, a mere “saying yes” 





‘Outline of Psychology (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 
1923), pp. 447f. 

‘Moral Values and the Idea of God (2nd ed., Cambridge: Univer- 
sity Press, 1921), p. 442. 


CREATIVE WORSHIP 209 


or “saying no”; but this narrowing of the scope of 
freedom does not preclude its relation to a genuinely 
creative process. 

Outside of the field of technical philosophy and psy- 
chology there has been a similar development of thought. 
Edward Carpenter’s The Art of Creation (1894), one of 
the earlier products of this stream, was referred to with 
approval by James. Of late the idea has been popular- 
ized and applied in many fields. We may speak of a 
whole literature of creativity. Slosson’s Creative Chem- 
istry is a familiar illustration in the field of natural 
science, and Miss Follett’s Creative Experience is an 
important application to the social sciences of the prin- 
ciple under discussion. It was doubtless inevitable that 
the idea should be put to such further use as is made of 
it in E. S. Holmes’ Creative Mind and Success. 

For our present purpose the application of the prin- 
ciple of creativity to religion is of primary interest. 
There is an abundant literature here. Cross has writ- 
ten of Creative Christianity, Drown of The Creative 
Christ, and Mrs. Herman of Creative Prayer (a book of 
high devotional value). In the philosophical interpreta- 
tion of worship as creativity we undoubtedly owe most 
to Hocking’s Meaning of God in Human Hxperience; 
Bennett’s Philosophical Study of Mysticism makes fur- 
ther fruitful suggestions. The significant concept of 
creative personality is made central to the interpretation 
of religious experience both in Youtz’s The Supremacy 
of the Spiritual and in Flewelling’s The Reason in Faith. 

This literature of creativity and freedom is not record- 
ing any utterly new discovery of modern times. There 
are few wholly new ideas in the world and the concept 
of creativity is not one of those few. What is happen- 
ing is that a new emphasis is being given to a neglected 
aspect of experience. A hundred years ago Hegel saw, 


210 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


perhaps more clearly than any other thinker, the dra- 
matic movement of creation both in our conscious expe- 
rience and in the world of nature. The Hegelian Idee 
was a process, not a “block,” as James wrongly thought. 
Hegel saw that life is a conflict of contradictory forces 
which lead to ever higher syntheses, and that every true 
synthesis, whether in the objective or the subjective 
order, is genuinely creative. 

Poets and artists have always known the secret of 
creation. In the familiar and profound words of Brown- 
ing, the musician’s creativity is described: 

“But here is the finger of God, a fiash of the will that can, 

Existent behind all laws, that made them, and lo, they 

are! 
And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man, 

That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, 

but a star. 
Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is naught: 

It is everywhere in the world—loud, soft, and all is 

Said: 
Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought: 

And there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the 

head.” 


Historic religion has always known of God as creative 
power. 

“Father Bel, faithful prince, mighty prince, thou 
createst the strength of life!’ 

“Since the gods created man, Death they ordained for 
man, Life in their hands they hold.’’6 

The higher religions hold before their devotees a shin- 
ing goal, the achieving of a new life in God, his gift. 

“Then is the mortal no more mortal, 
But here and now attaineth Brahma.’’* 


°G. A. Barton, Archeology and the Bible (American Sunday 
School Union, 1916), pp. 401, 412. 

'G. F. Moore, History of Religions (New York: Charles Scribner’s 
sons,’ 1913), vol. I, p. 276: 


CREATIVE WORSHIP 211 


Christianity fairly teems with the creative spirit. Its 
sacred book is the New Testament. It commands a new 
birth, promises a new heart. It is new wine, new cloth, 
anew commandment; to its followers is promised a new 
name; they shall sing a new song. They long for the 
New Jerusalem, a new heavens and a new earth, yes, a 
new creation. “Behold, I make all things new.” Chris- 
tian worship in early times, at least, was a novelty- 
creating force in the experience of men. The Christian 
God was a Creator who was a Redeemer. When a sect 
arose, the Gnostics, who sought to separate the two 
functions by declaring that the God who redeems is 
not the God who creates, it aroused great popular inter- 
est, but soon became a powerless intellectualism. 

Now by roundabout ways, as we have seen, current 
thought is returning to the ancient insight of philosophy 
and art and religion, that reality is creative. Never- 
theless, considering the intellectual temper of the age, 
it is somewhat surprising that the rediscovery of crea- 
tivity has occurred so soon. This is an industrial, real- 
istic, mechanistic age. Necessity has been in the saddle. 
Nature and society, life and mind, have all been con- 
ceived as subject to iron laws. Perhaps just because of 
the reign of determinism, it was time for freedom and 
creation again to emerge. Whatever the reason may be, 
on every side we see the insurgence of free life. The 
world is in a ferment. New forms of life are coming to 
birth in the realms of intellect and art, politics and in- 
dustry; the revolt of youth is as symptomatic of the 
times as it is of youth. 

It is easy to ridicule many of the forms that are as- 
sumed by the contemporary thirst for freedom. The 
search for new beauty in poetry and art seems often to 
be distracted and aimless. Yet behind it all there is a 
Spiritual fact. Freedom is again emerging in the human 


212 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


spirit; and the hunger for freedom is essentially a hun- 
ger for new powers and new values; that is, a hunger 
for God, the Supreme Power and the Supreme Value. 

It is an auspicious moment for religion to speak its 
revealing word about the worship of God. It must be 
admitted, however, that the authentic accent of spiritual 
creativity has none too often been heard from the in- 
terpreters of religion. In too much of what has been 
said and written under the name of creative Christian- 
ity the emphasis has been on changing forms of doc- 
trine and belief, new views of the Scriptures, new husks! 
If true religion is to be understood, there is less need of 
fervid reiteration of commonplaces about intellectual 
honesty and evolution than of more insight into the val- 
ues that emerge when worship is evolved. Thought, we 
are told, must seek higher levels in each generation; 
the mind must make new forms and new adjustments. 
Obviously, obviously! But why not take up the order 
of the day: How does man, at any level, find God? In 
the deeper literature of creativity and mystical experi- 
ence there are signs that religious thought is turning 
from the barren truisms of a shallow intellectualism to 
a search for reality, for God himself. 


3. WHAT WORSHIP CREATES: PERSPECTIVE 


If religion be right in its faith that the true worship 
of God is one of the highest points of the universal 
creative process, there arises the problem, What is it 
that worship creates? What qualities of life are pro- 
duced? What sort of persons are made? 

A complete account of the fruition of worship would 
be impossible within the limits of a single chapter. 
From the many fruits of the Spirit four will be selected 
for special consideration, namely, perspective, a spiritual 
ideal, power, and a community of love. These are a few 


CREATIVE WORSHIP 213 


of the many “very lofty and lovely things touching a 
perfect life,” which are the peculiar property of worship. 
First, as has just been said, worship gives man per- 
spective. The natural man starts with his body and its 
needs, what his senses experience and his desires de- 
mand, and with the conventions of his group. A certain 
perspective is given in the very conditions of existence; 
but it is not the ultimate perspective that man needs. 
The accidents of life soon force him to acknowledge 
that he and his are not all that exists. There are powers 
beyond his domain. He tries to explore their ways of 
acting, and to understand and control them for his own 
ends. But in worship he comes to his most intimate 
relations with those powers, relations of a quite different 
order from those of his natural life. Worship enables 
him to look at his life not alone from his own point of 
view, or from any human standpoint, but, in some meas- 
ure, from the point of view of his God. If creative 
prayer be, as Mrs. Herman calls it, “the soul’s pilgrim- 
age from self to God,’’* when one finds God, one finds a 
new perspective, which is not only new but unique. 
This perspective is not identical with the emotional 
glow of a conversion experience or a mystical ecstasy. 
It is, rather, the insight that comes to man when his life 
and the whole world are set into relation to his God and 
when he thus recognizes himself as member of the whole 
in which God is supreme. For many mystical souls this 
experience of perspective and its attendant emotions are 
the whole of religion. For all who truly worship it is 
most precious. He who said, “Unless a man say in his 
heart, I and God are alone in the world, he will never 
find peace’? was expressing the common faith of most 
deeply religious natures. The vitality of pantheism 





SCreative Prayer, p. 8. 
*Abbott Alois, quoted by Herman, Creative Prayer, p. 65. 


214 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


among mystics is probably due largely to its interpreta- 
tion of this perspective. We are the branches; he is the 
vine. We are thus one with God. The intellectual de- 
fects of pantheism are, in the eyes of the mystic, atoned 
for by its religious genius. In recent times Bernard 
Bosanquet, as we saw in Chapter VI, has made the reli- 
gious perspective beautiful and persuasive in his book- 
let, What Religion Is. “You cannot be a whole,” he 
there told us, “unless you join a whole.” John Dewey, 
a very different sort of thinker from Bosanquet, also 
speaks of religion in one of his books as “the freedom 
and peace of the individual as a member of an infinite 
whole.”’® Thus it is evident that religious worship con- 
nects man’s inmost life with a realm that is more-than- 
human, more-than-social—the realm of what is eternally 
real. 

Such a perspective is no mere barren theory, if, in- 
deed, theories are barren; it is a force in life. It gives 
man what he most needs, namely, the combination of a 
sense of his personal worth with a sense of personal 
subordination. Hither of these alone is easily achieved. 
A sense of personal worth is the native element of the 
natural man. A sense of personal subordination is the 
ready attitude of the fawning politician, the self-seeker, 
or any man who is in a mood of depression. But how 
easily each of these changes into something less valuable 
than itself! It takes but little to transform the sense 
of personal worth into intolerable self-conceit and the 
sense of subordination into false humility. But every 
true value creates the union of the two to some extent. 
Loyalty to the true or the good or the beautiful nourishes 
the worth of the individual and yet subjects him to the 
law of the ideal which he is seeking to attain. Yet no 
experience in life deepens and intensifies both of these 


Human Nature and Conduct, p. 331. 


CREATIVE WORSHIP 215 


aspects in such perfect balance as does the worship of 
God. “The practice of the presence of God,’ says 
Jeremy Taylor, “is the cause of great modesty and de- 
cency in our actions . . . when we see ourselves placed 
in the eye of God.’’!! 

To be truly and inseparably a member of the whole 
of which God is the Supreme Power creates the sense of 
personal worth. Man communes with God! The Infi- 
nite God condescends to man, and seeks him as a shep- 
herd seeks his lost sheep! Yet the sense of the value of 
one’s own soul, while preserved, is set at once into violent 
contrast with an idea that serves as its check and bal- 
ance. To be truly a member of the whole exalts my self- 
esteem; but to be member of such a whole! A whole of 
which God is center and source! Overwhelming power, 
blinding beauty, ineffable wisdom, stainless goodness, 
all reveal to me my dependence and my subordination. 
The transcendent God is infinitely beyond and above me. 
Positivism cannot at all understand this secret of wor- 
ship. The language of worship never stops short with 
the consideration of the worth of the human soul or of 
human society; it speaks in utter humility and adora- 
tion the sacred name of God. 

Personal worth and personal subordination thus fuse 
in the worshiper’s experience. Out of this tension of 
opposites is born religious personality with its peculiar 
qualities—a poise that, while worship lives, can never 
become apathy, a peace that cannot become mere pas- 
Sivity, a joy that cannot become frivolity, a confidence 
that cannot become overconfidence. True religious wor- 
ship, therefore, will feed the springs of inner life with 
a secret calm that supplants the fears which paralyze 
humanity. A popular writer has well said that “if hope 
and courage go out of the lives of common men, it is all 

“Holy Living, p. 29. 


216 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


up with social and political civilization.”!2 The rebirth 
of worship is an urgent need of civilization. 

No lesser and no other good than God gives to man 
the perspective of which we have been speaking. Out 
of this perspective emerges the trust that leads the au- 
thor of the Theologia Germanica to say, “I would fain 
be to the Eternal Goodness what his own hand is to a 
man,’ or the more tragic writer of Job to ery, “Though 
he slay me, yet will I trust in him.” Without God-con- 
sciousness culture may be a magnificent human achieve- 
ment, but at its soul it will lack the absolute center of 
peace which only the worshiper knows. 

“There is a point of rest 
At the great center of the cyclone’s force, 
A silence at its secret source ;— 
A little child might slumber undistressed, 
Without the ruffle of one fairy curl, 
In that strange central calm amid the mighty whirl. 
So in the center of these thoughts of God. . .”13 


Your programs of social reform, your ancient and op- 
pressively solemn rites, your modern intellectualisms 
are, if the truth were spoken, no worship, no religion, 
unless they interpret God to mer. 


4. WHAT WORSHIP CREATES: A SPIRITUAL IDEAL 


Wherever true worship has created perspective the 
current of spiritual life begins to flow deeper. Worship, 
we found, has a fashion of intensifying and enriching 
itself as it proceeds from contemplation to revelation, 
from revelation to communion, and from communion to 
fruition. These stages, as was remarked in the previous 


VA. E. Wiggam, The New Decalogue of Science (Indianapolis: 
Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1922), p. 262. 

“Frances Ridley Havergal, in Oxford Book of English Mystical 
Verse (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1916), pp. 285f. By permission of 
Nisbet and Company, London, owner of the copyright. 


CREATIVE WORSHIP et, 


chapter, do not necessarily follow any one order of 
development in time, but stand in most complicated in- 
terrelations. The perspective of which we have been 
speaking is that fruition of worship which is the out- 
growth of reverent contemplation. The revelation 
which comes to the contemplating worshiper also creates 
its fruit, which we shall call the spiritual ideal. 

The fact that man is an ideal-forming being is one 
of the most significant facts about him. How he comes 
to form ideals is a subject for psychological investiga- 
tion. But let psychology describe that process in any 
way it please, for the worshiper two things will be true: 
he will see the law of that process as his God’s way of 
working in the mind of man, and he will know that his 
ideal assumes its actual form precisely because he wor- 
ships. When true worship creates perspective, it brings 
in its train an ideal of what spiritual life ought to be. 
The infinite perspective generates an infinite ideal of 
perfection. As Eucken has pointed out, the Geistesle- 
ben, the experience of ideal and eternal values, reveals 
a power at work in man beyond the merely human. Wor- 
ship creates a vision of perfect life and an intense desire 
for its attainment. The most repellent forms of asceti- 
cism and fanaticism are at their heart but a perversion 
of the soul’s longing to attain perfection. 

God is perfect goodness, perfect value. The worshiper 
of such a God has had revealed to him an ideal of his 
own personality as completely devoted to the perfect 
values of his God. In the nature of this spiritual ideal 
lies its peculiar creativity. It is an unattainable, an in- 
exhaustible ideal; one the pursuit of which is self- 
justifying and utterly satisfying, yet one which requires 
eternity for its realization. No infinitely repeated cycle 
of world history, of which the ancients dreamed, could 
express or exhaust this ideal. Nietzsche’s doctrine of 


218 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


eternal recurrence is too meager a vehicle for it. ‘The 
Spiritual ideal is,’ as Radoslav Tsanoff has recently 
pointed out,'* “not eternal recurrence but eternal as- 
piration. God work is always being done, and never 
done with.” The pragmatic notion of adjustment to the 
natural environment is but a mutilated fragment of 
what this ideal demands. | 

The nature of the spiritual ideal gives rise to prob- 
lems, one of which we may now examine. Just how is 
the worshiper to think of the realization of this ideal? 
He believes that it has been revealed to him by God; 
in God, then, is its home, its guarantee, its eternal real- 
ization. Yet there is a peril in dwelling too exclusively 
on the realization of the ideal in God. If the universe be 
already perfected, there is ground for faith, but there 
is also ground for inaction, as was shown in the chapter 
on ‘The Moral Basis of Religious Values.” The Divine 
Sovereign, divinely perfect, has made his universe the 
home of value. What has the religious soul to do but 
to accept and contemplate the divine perfection? Quiet- 
ism is the natural conclusion from this premise. The 
logic of certain forms of absolutism, of pantheism, and 
of Calvinism all points in the same direction. Worship, 
then, is in peril of causing a barren and passive inaction. 
To “fold the hands and calmly wait” is the highest 
achievement of which this phase is capable. Calm faith 
is assuredly a blessing when it engenders loyalty, a 
curse when it creates indifference to the duties of life. 

In order to avoid this peril of indifferentism some fly 
to the opposite extreme of holding that the ideal is to 
be made real, if at all, by man’s own efforts. 'This is the 
typical attitude of the entirely nonreligious person; 
within the religious camp it develops the purely human- 





“The Problem of Immortality (New York: The Macmillan Com- 
pany, 1924), pp. 177f. 


CREATIVE WORSHIP 219 


istic religion (if it may properly be called religion) 
which identifies the whole of religion with the Golden 
Rule, makes service its motto, and regards worship and 
inner spirituality as superfluities, or at best luxuries. 
Bertrand Russell, John Dewey, Ralph Barton Perry, 
and many other writers agree in this humanistic 
religion. 

If these opposed perils are both to be avoided, the 
Spiritual ideal of religion should constantly be viewed 
in the perspective of which we spoke earlier. When 
thus regarded, the realization of the ideal is seen to be 
an infinite cooperative process in the whole to which 
man belongs; yet man’s part in that process, however 
small, is seen to be essential to the whole. The ideal 
that is born into the worshiping soul cannot then lead 
to mere blessed contemplation of a perfect universe 
when it is fully grasped in its total meaning; nor can 
it lead to mere feverish, despairing activity. What reli- 
gion offers is the high adventure of cooperation with 
God. 


5. WHAT WORSHIP CREATES: POWER 


If religion created no more than the perspective and 
the ideal of which we have been speaking, it would have 
justified itself. Yet perspectives and ideals seem to the 
average man feeble and futile. He craves something 
that makes it possible for him to live in accordance with 
the ideal. That something is the creation of communion, 
the third stage of worship. The fruit of communion at 
its highest levels is power. From its most primitive 
forms to its most developed, religion has been a search 
for power, a faith that there were untapped reservoirs 
of spiritual energy in the unseen. He who in worship 
becomes conscious of communing with the Eternal God 
is able to report that he is endued with power from 


220 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


on high. “I am God’s, who knows that Iam. ... And 
thus,” says the shoemaker mystic, Jacob Boehme, “thus 
is the cure of my soul’s sickness; he that will adventure 
it with me shall find by experience what God will make 
of him.” “What is hereby intimated to the magus?” he 
asks in another quaint passage. “A mystery is hinted to 
him: If he will do wonders with Christ, and tincture the 
corrupt body to the new birth, he must first be baptized, 
and then he gets an hunger after God’s bread, and this 
hunger has in it the verbum fiat, viz., the archeus to 
the new generation. ... But I do not speak here of 
a priest’s baptism; the artist must understand it mag- 
ically; God and man must first come together ere thou 
baptizest, as it came to pass in Christ.’15 Boehme expe- 
rienced power—the verbum fiat, the new generation. 
Religious power has certain striking traits. In com- 
mon with all power, it makes a new future possible for 
the person. That new future may not be a control of 
environment or of bodily disease, but perhaps something 
more valuable—the control of inner attitude. But reli- 
gious power has an additional aspect that is more char- 
acteristic. Not only can it, within limits, control the 
future; it can also transform the past. The common 
idea that the past is a record that has been written once 
for all and can never be altered in the slightest iota is 
true enough so far as the content of the past is con- 
cerned; but it is not true of the meaning of the past. 
One never knows what a picture means until one has 
Seen the whole picture. One cannot understand a poem 
from the first few lines; one must read the entire poem. 
Likewise one cannot read off the meaning of one’s past 
experiences without considering their relation to the 
present and future. This fact is of great moment to 





*Signature of All Things, etc. (Hveryman’s Library), pp. 104f., 67. 


CREATIVE WORSHIP 221 


religion. The worshiper, believing that present and 
future may be given new power by his communion with 
God, has faith that his whole life, including his past, is 
also transformed by that same power. He who worships 
will always know that his past has been what it was, 
with all its weaknesses, sins, and shames. But before 
he communed with God that past was sin; after meeting 
God his past is still the same sin, but that sin forgiven, 
the sinner redeemed. The same facts are there; but 
religion has power to give them a different meaning. As 
the final stroke of the artist’s brush changes the whole 
effect of a painting, so the experience of the forgiving 
mercy of God changes the whole effect of a soul. 

Since the power that religion imparts is not mechan- 
ical but personal, not coercive but cooperative, it is an 
original experience, a liberation of the soul. Institu- 
tionalized religion has been and is to a regrettable ex- 
tent the enemy of freedom; but ‘the experience of wor- 
Ship is the soul’s charter of liberty. Communion with 
God means freedom from bondage to the past, to the 
environing world, to the future; a freedom that comes 
from commerce with reality itself. The church has 
been a force in society partly because it has this charter 
of freedom. Religious power, then, is freedom; and its 
freedom is power. 


6. WHAT WORSHIP CREATES: A COMMUNITY OF LOVE 


No account of the fruit of worship in personality 
would be complete if it omitted what is the supreme con- 
summation of worship, and, if the experiences of reli- 
gion foreshadow truth, the very goal and purpose of the 
universe: I mean, the Community of Love, or, as Royce 
called it, the Beloved Community. So far we have 
been considering the creative power of worship in the 
experience Of the individual worshiper. But, however 


222 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


true it may be that in the act of worship there is always 
a “flight of the alone to the alone,” and that the moment 
of worship is a temporary forgetting of one’s fellow- 
men, the experience of finding God is also a rediscovery 
of every other human soul. Worship needs and finds a 
God who is God of all. National and tribal deities, 
gods of a special race or*class, are not the God of the 
perspective and spiritual ideal of worship. From the 
point of view of worship every man is seen in his rela- 
tion to a God of inexhaustible resources whose name 
is Love; and hence humanity is given the task of real- 
izing the Community of Love. 

This social fruitage, we maintain, is a necessary out- 
come even of the most individual acts of worship, when 
they are truly understood. A genuine relation of one 
soul to God must generate a relation of that soul to all 
of God’s children in all their interests. 

But this is not the whole story. Individual worship in 
the secret places of the heart is indeed essential to all 
true religion; but experience shows that when individ- 
uals come together and become a worshiping commu- 
nity, new spiritual levels are reached, new values 
created, new powers released. No function of conscious- 
ness remains precisely the same when others are present 
as when the individual is alone. Social worship adds 
new depth and meaning to the experience of God. It 
is not a substitute for private devotion, any more than 
opinions of one’s social group are a substitute for one’s 
conscience or intelligence. But through social worship 
love is made more sacred, the feeling of unity with our 
fellow creatures (for which John Stuart Mill yearned) 
becomes more vivid and binding, and the fact that God 
is God of all is more adequately expressed than through 
any private worship. Hence, he who seeks to be reli- 
gious apart from the worshiping congregation of the 


CREATIVE WORSHIP 223 


church is surrendering more than he can well afford 
to lose. 

Worship, then, is necessarily social at its highest 
point. It has been said, for example by Coe, that certain 
forms of mystical experience are anti-social; that they 
“involve turning away from the neighbor whom one has 
Seen, away from the whole sphere in which love can 
act.”*® It must be granted that excesses may often be 
found in the history of religious mysticism. But no 
type of experience should be judged by its abnormal 
forms; as well condemn sense-perception on the ground 
that there are hallucinations of sense! The wellspring 
of social unity and spiritual love in the mystical wor- 
ship of the God of love should never be forgotten. Reli- 
gious worship, alone of all the forces known to man, 
is able to perform that miracle of pity and of hope which 
enables him who has seen God to see not his fellow wor- 
shipers only, but all mankind, as a potential Community 
of Love. That miracle, I say; for the natural man lacks 
this vision; and the presence of traces of such a feeling 
toward the human race is almost universally regarded 
as a token of the presence and work of God in the life 
of man. 


7. THe PREPARATION OF THE SOUL FOR CREATION 


These are the creation of worship: perspective, the 
Spiritual ideal, power, and the community of love. Yet 
with the description of these or other products of wor- 
ship the question has not been answered which we hu- 
man beings most need to have answered if worship be 
all that faith takes it to be. That problem is, How may 
the miracle be wrought in me? What forces are at my 
disposal to produce the fair fruit of the Spirit? 





*Psychology of Religion (University of Chicago Press, 1916), 
p. 285. 


224 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


The first answer that one might give is that there is 
no human answer; it is the gift of God. “The Spirit 
bloweth where it listeth; thou canst not tell.” Not by 
measure and rule does God give himself to man, but as 
he will. Yet this answer is singularly unsatisfying. 
A God of arbitrary whim is not the object of worship. 
The worshiper’s God is a God who may be trusted. His 
ways are not our ways; but his way is perfect and so it 
is reasonable and good. Thus the worshiper may ground 
his hope of discovering some of the ways that lead to 
God’s creative working in the soul. 

It would not be unreasonable to expect that there 
might be some analogy between creativity in the spirit- 
ual life and that on lower levels of existence. Observa- 
tion shows that what Wundt calls the creative resultant 
occurs whenever the proper elements are brought to- 
gether. Give Shakespeare’s mind the vocabulary of the 
English speech plus his imagination, and a new crea- 
tion occurs. Paint and the artist’s utensils and the 
artist’s soul produce a beauty which it would be fatuous 
to explain in terms of the crude material stuff which he 
employed. The creative resultant is a new whole which 
contains more than the elements which seemed to make 
it up. 

Creation, then, as a general rule, happens when ele- 
ments which are not usually united are brought to- 
gether under proper conditions to produce a new whole. 
Many elements in our world lie side by side, mutually 
inert. On a study table are articles of metal and paper, 
wood and leather, ink and glass and rubber. Each is 
indifferent to the other. They might lie there for dec- 
ades and nothing might happen to them save the ac- 
cumulation of dust. But if fire should come into contact 
with them, they would all be changed. Something new 
would be created—in this case, something pitiably 


CREATIVE WORSHIP 225 


worthless. But if an organizing mind should use these 
same materials, adding to them what serves its purpose, 
then the new creation may be a thing of power and 
beauty, a drama or a poem. The elements thus com- 
bined obey an ideal will and assume a new form. In 
worship the elements that need to be brought together 
are the soul and God. When they are consciously and 
truly together the miracle happens which no words can 
fully describe. 

In the present consideration of the forces that make 
for creativity the “negative path” of the mystic will be 
omitted from consideration in order that our thought 
may dwell more exclusively on the positively creative 
forces. . 

Of these forces the first is what may be called the 
preparation of the soul. No human being can create 
anything new unless something in his life has prepared 
the soil of his spirit for the germination and growth of 
the seed of the new life. In the language that we have 
been employing, contemplation of God, revelation from 
him, and communion with him are the necessary pre- 
conditions of creative worship. Lack of intense prep- 
aration of the soul accounts for the emptiness and fever- 
ishness of much that is regarded as religious, or at least 
as social, service. To expect the fruit of the Spirit 
without spiritual preparation for the same is to expect 
the impossible; it is to substitute mechanism for spirit. 
Religious faith cannot doubt that God is equally near 
to the souls of all men, to the grossest and dullest as 
well as to the most sensitive and obedient. Yet, though 
God be there, the miracle cannot happen to the unpre- 
pared soul. That is why so much of the talk about being 
religious without going to church is largely cant, and 
not pious cant either. New life is not created by magic, 
nor by wishing well toward Deity, nor even by enjoying 


226 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


nature in spiritual emptiness. Germs of life must be 
planted in the invisible regions of our spirit ere the 
mystery of creation can be enacted. God’s creation of 
new life in us is not ew nihilo; the human attitude fur- 
nishes the necessary material. The process of fruition 
comes only after a process of fertilization. 


8. CONFLICT AS CREATIVE 


After the preparation, what then? What is the way 
that nature shows us? Is it not the way of growth 
through conflict? “Strife is the father of all things.” 
Conflict is indeed a force that makes for creativity. Out 
of the tension of opposites, new levels of experience 
arise. 

It is all too easy to make irresponsible use of this prin- 
ciple. Is conflict a creative force? Then, say some, any 
conflict is good. Let him who would climb the heights 
of artistic creation descend to the depths of dissolute 
living. Let him who would achieve power begin by seek- 
ing to destroy the power of others. Yet human history 
teaches on every page how self-defeating are many forms 
of conflict. Not all conflict leads to God. Not every 
war is the Holy War. 

The spiritual conflict that generates power is a special 
kind of conflict. It is first of all the struggle of the soul 
toward God; then, the effort of the rational will to dis- 
cover and maintain the tension of opposing forces in 
such manner as to preserve the value in each, yet also 
to lift the spirit to a higher level. Jacob Boehme 
understood 


the opposition and combat in the essence of all essences. .. . 
Seeing, [he says] there are so many and divers forms, that 
the one always produces and affords out of its property 
a will different in one from another, we herein understand the 
contrariety and combat in the Being of all beings. 


CREATIVE WORSHIP 227 


And then we understand herein the cure, how the one heals 
another, and brings it to health; and if this were not, there 
were no nature, but an eternal stillness, and no will; for 
the contrary will makes the motion, and the original of the 
seeking, that the opposite sound seeks the rest, and yet in 
the seeking it only elevates and more enkindles itself.!? 


That is, spiritual conflict is essentially a dialectic move- 
ment that does not destroy but uses the energy in the 
cross-currents of the soul. Worship is not merely nega- 
tive. Asceticism, therefore, is not true worship; true 
worship is growth and creation through conflict, that is, 
through seeing the relation of conflict to God, “the es- 
sence of all essences.” 

This conflict is partly within the individual; partly 
between the individual and society. For religious faith, 
all of these conflicts are aspects of the divine conflict 
initiated by God himself for the making of souls. It is 
safe to add that the worship of God is the only human 
experience large enough in its scope to be able to speak 
the word of creative control to all the impulses in man’s 
breast; worship alone is the experience in which every 
conflict becomes creative power. 

Not only do the conflicts within the natural man and 
his world serve as occasions for the development of 
power, but worship itself also generates new conflicts. 
He who contemplates dwells on the God he knows, yet 
he finds that God to be a mystery. The recipient of 
revelation is passive yet impelled to activity. He who 
communes with God attains a blessed intimacy, yet is 
overwhelmed with awe in the presence of the Holy One. 
Knowledge-mystery, activity-passivity, intimacy-awe— 
these conflicts and tensions in worship are ever creative 
of new levels of life. New impulses, new standards, new 
virtues, pour into the worshiping mind. This aspect of 





ZOD Cll Dib los 


228 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


worship is perhaps a reason for the religious uses of 
parable and allegory that conceal and yet reveal the 
thought and thus challenge the inner life. 


9. SILENT SELF-POSSESSION AS CREATIVE 


To the preparation of the soul and the conflict of 
which we have been speaking an additional element 
must always be present if the value of worship is to be 
realized. ‘The spiritual life is the single mind, unified 
by concentration on one supreme purpose. Hence, self- 
possession is one of the most significant sources of 
creative power. Concentration always leads to new 
vision or new life. If we 


“See all sights from pole to pole 
And glance, and nod, and bustle by; 
And never once possess our soul 
Before we die,’’?8 


we may be sure that no great creative moment will oc- 
cur in our lives. But he who focuses the rays of the sun 
of being in the burning glass of his mind will see the tiny 
bright spot turn dark and darker until it bursts into 
flame. The Chinese sage Mencius knew something of 
the meaning of the power of self-possession when he said, 
“He who brings all his intellect to bear on the subject 
will come to understand his own nature; he who under- 
stands his own nature will understand God.”’!® The 
sophisticated modern may smile at the naive faith of 
the Oriental philosopher, but let him who has truly con- 
centrated on the soul and God, if he will, cast the first 
stone. 

The power of self-possession is too abundantly illus- 
trated in the history of mysticism to require detailed 





*Arnold’s Poetical Works, p. 404. 
“Tr. Giles, in Confucianism and Its Rivals. 


CREATIVE WORSHIP 229 


exposition. Yet an age that has forgotten how to be 
silent and fears to be alone needs to be reminded that 
new life springs up in moments of solitary, concentrated 
meditation. The pious Boehme expresses this truth in 
dialogue form. The disciple asks, “But wherewith shall 
I hear and see God, forasmuch as he is above nature and 
creature?” The master replies, “Son, when thou art 
quiet and silent, then art thou as God was before nature 
and creature; thou art that which God then was; thou 
art that whereof he made thy nature and creature; 
Then thou hearest and seest even with that wherewith 
God saw and heard in thee before ever thine own willing 
or thine own seeing began.”*° Even when we meet with 
our fellows, spiritual natures do not need constantly to 
talk and act. Friends who can be silent together are 
friends indeed. ‘There is a wise pastor, seeking to de- 
velop this source of power among his people, who con- 
ducts services of meditation which lead up to a final 
period of utter quiet; and, to quote his words, “in the 
last creative silence, things begin to happen.” 


10. THE VISION OF GOD AS CREATIVE 


The forces that create spiritual values in the human 
personality may be analyzed and described as fully as 
we please, yet in the end they all come to one force, one 
experience, which is the beginning and end of worship 
and all religion. This one supreme force, which is the 
root of all creation in human worship, is the experience 
of seeing God. Contemplation is looking for God; see- 
ing him is the experience that is reported by every soul 
that has made to the full the experiment of worship. 
Made, I say, to the full; for there are not many to-day 
who have the patience to “look at anything,’ as Mr. 





The Signature of All Things, etc. (Hveryman’s Library), p. 228. 


230 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


Squire puts it, “long enough to feel its conscious calm 
assault.”’?4 

There are substantial reasons why the idea of God is 
a creative power in human life, and therefore the truest 
religion is always theocentric. Some few of these we 
may consider briefly. 

Seeing God is a creative experience, first of all, be- 
cause to see God is to confront reality. An evil and 
adulterous generation seeketh a sign; that is, it seeks 
something foreign to reality. A neurasthenic genera- 
tion seeketh alcohol or any form of stimulation that 
will conceal reality from eyes too weak to stand its light. 
Hope for new and wholesome human life dawns the 
moment men are willing to confront the facts. Now 
some have thought that religion was one more mechan- 
ism for escape from the stern realities of this life into 
a compensatory world of the imagination, where all is 
bright and fair. For this view of the nature of religion 
there is considerable historical evidence in the beliefs 
that have actually been held. But if one take a broad 
view of the purpose that has inspired the great religious 
personalities, one cannot believe that religion has been 
experienced by them as a mechanism of escape. They 
have sought the real, the living God; their prayer has 
been, “Thy will, not mine, be done.” If genius be ob- 
jectivity, then the religious genius must be one of the 
highest types; for religion, in its highest aim, is objectiv- 
ity regarding those matters of value, destiny, and eter- 
nity regarding which objectivity is most difficult to 
attain. 

Again in a still different way the worshiper’s vision 
of God is creative. While it inspires him to confront the 
real, it leads him beyond the partial glimpse of reality 





=J. C. Squire, in the poem, “Paradise Lost,” Poems, First Series 
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1919), p. 97. 


CREATIVE WORSHIP 231 


that is his immediate experience to a broad view of the 
whole meaning of his life and his world. Religious wor- 
ship, then, fosters creativity by its breadth of view. Miss 
Follett has recently remarked that a fact out of relation 
is not a fact; and quotes Mr. Justice Holmes as saying 
that it is not “the acquisition of facts (which is impor- 
tant) but learning how to make the facts live, . . . leap 
into an organic order, live and bear fruit.”?? This is, in 
essence, the familiar Hegelian doctrine which Royce 
had in mind when he used to say that a hand apart from 
the body is no longer a hand. If religion taught us only 
to confront reality as a collection of brute facts, it would 
be barren. It bears fruit abundantly because it sets all 
the facts in relation to the plan of the whole, which it 
calls the will of God. Thus it broadens the field of 
vision and gives an indescribable exaltation to the life 
that deeply experiences it. “Whosoever obtaineth [the 
love of God],” says Boehme,”? “is richer than any mon- 
arch on earth; and he who getteth it is nobler than any 
emperor can be, and more potent and absolute than all 
power and authority.” ‘This extraordinary enlargement 
of self-consciousness arises from the infinity of the God 
who is seen. 

Further, to see God is to catch a glimpse of universal 
purpose, of total meaning in life. Even one glimpse of 
that universal meaning and universal love is enough to 
impart a new quality to a human life. No worshiper be- 
lieves that to see God is to understand him fully; but 
no worshiper believes that God remains wholly unseen 
to the spiritual eye. If only for a moment we see God, 
we are like the scientific investigator to whom has oc- 
curred suddenly the clew that will explain the mass of 





2M. P. Follett, Creative Experience (New York: Longmans, Green 
& Co., 1924), p. 12. 
*Op. cit., p. 258, 


232 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


facts which he has accumulated, or like the poet who 
has been given the inspiration for a poem, or like the 
preacher in whose soul the plan of a stirring sermon has 
emerged—save that in the case of the worshiper the plan 
that is revealed is the total plan of the cosmos, veiled in 
mystery, it is true, but a mystery of wisdom and love. 
Saint Augustine reports a simple psychological experi- 
ence which may serve as an illustration here. When he 
is about to repeat a psalm which he knows, he says, ‘“‘Be- 
fore I begin my expectation extends over the whole,” 
“in totum expectatio mea tenditur.”** "This experience 
of memory is also typical of creation, “in totum expecta- 
tio mea tenditur.” The whole over which the expecta- 
tion of the worshiper extends is the very plan of God; 
and hence in worship some of the noblest fruits of hu- 
man lifeare born. It is perhaps one function of the con- 
stant repetition of ritual forms to symbolize the ever- 
present oneness of the creative God. 

One final aspect of the vision of God will be men- 
tioned. He who worships is conscious of seeing a God 
who hides himself. The great philosophies and religions 
agree in this: that God does not reveal himself to sense, 
and that no revelation of him to man is complete; but 
that this God, partly revealed, partly hidden, is drawing 
the world to himself by love. 

From sense God is wholly hidden; at best the objects 
of our sense experience serve as signs and symbols of 
the beyond. Of all that we can see we must say, God is 
not this, not this! Yet while God is wholly hidden from 
sense the discerning mind of the worshiper sees that 
Sense is a veil which conceals hidden meaning; nay, 
more, it is, as Berkeley says, a divine language. It is 
not merely maya and illusion. But one must go beyond 





*Conf., XI, 27 (Loeb, II, 276). 


CREATIVE WORSHIP 233 


the language to him who utters it if one is to find the 
God who hides himself. 

Likewise from feeling God is hidden. It is true that 
the experience of worship is an experience of deep feel- 
ing. Worship without feeling is a barren thing, if it be 
worship at all. The mystic’s experience is chiefly feel- 
ing; a feeling of which the author of the Theologia Ger- 
manica can write, “A single one of these excellent 
glances is better, worthier, ‘higher and more pleasing to 
God than all that the creature can perform as a crea- 
ture.”’*° Yet assurance that the God experienced by 
feeling is indeed the God of reality is never given by 
any feeling, no matter how ecstatic or satisfying. Fur- 
ther, feeling at best gives us a single focusing of the life 
of God in the soul; its content may be intense and in- 
effable, but feeling is a meager interpretation of the 
rich life of the Supreme Person, God. God, then, re- 
mains hidden from feeling. 

He is also to some extent hidden from thought. 
Thought, it is true, is necessary to worship. Without 
some idea of God a religious feeling could not be dis- 
tinguished from the feeling of intoxication or anes- 
thesia, nor could fanaticism be distinguished from reas- 
onable faith. The popular prejudice against doctrine is 
intelligible as a blind reaction against arid overemphasis 
on it; but it is not intelligible as an interpretation of 
the truth about religion. The intellectual interpretation 
of God is a necessary phase or adjunct of worship. The 
complete divorce between religion and _ philosophy 
means, in the end, the barbarization of religion, a thing 
even more to be dreaded than the Hellenization of 
Christianity, which troubles Harnack. Yet it must also 
be freely confessed that God remains hidden from the 





sChap. 1X, p. 26, Eng. tr. 


234 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


truest and loftiest philosophical thought. As Royce 
said, “The divine truth is essentially coy. You woo her, 
you toil for her, you reflect upon her by night and by 
day .. .; in fine, you prepare your own ripest thought 
and lay it before your heavenly mistress when you have 
done your best. Will she be pleased? . . . Will she say, 
‘Thou hast well spoken concerning me’? Who can tell? 
Her eyes have their own beautiful fashion of looking 
far off when you want them to be turned upon you; and, 
after all, perhaps she prefers other suitors for her 
favorvage 

Some conception of the Divine Person may, I believe, 
be attained by thought and must be understood as well 
as possible if the worshiper is to maintain his self- 
respect. But thought must always hold its results hum- 
bly and open to correction, with the awareness that 
there is infinitely more beyond the best thought of the 
present. No theology, no philosophy, is absolute. Only 
the Absolute is absolute. God does not wear his heart 
upon his sleeve. His face is not an open book. Thought 
about him is an unendliche Aufgabe, an infinite task— 
a creative life-career for an immortal soul, indeed, but a 
career in which the hidden God will forever be sought, 
revealing much, yet ever luring on by hints of a mystery 
that lies beyond. 


11. THE CENTRAL PLACE OF THE WILL 


All that God is can never be revealed to man. The 
vision of God will never be perfect. Yet the experiment 
of worship reveals the fact that the adoration of this 
God who is known yet unknown, present yet absent, 
found in our feeling and thought yet transcending all 





“The Spirit of Modern Philosophy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 
Company, 1892), p. 73, 


CREATIVE WORSHIP 235 


that we shall ever find, is the secret source of what is 
perhaps the mightiest creative power on which our 
human life can rely. The God who is hidden from sense 
and feeling and thought is most completely revealed as 
the creator of the fruits of worship. Yet this statement 
is misleading unless it be at once added that God creates 
the fruits of worship only in the life of the worshiper. 
To use the language of James Bissett Pratt, the benefits 
of subjective worship come only to him who engages in 
objective worship. Worship is the complete personality 
of man directed toward and responding to the presence 
of God. Hence, the vision of God that is truly creative 
will use the facts of sense and of feeling and of thought, 
but will not rest content with any one of those phases. 
It will learn that the hidden God is found adequately for 
our human needs only by the whole personality in 
action, that is, controlled by what we call will. In the 
end, the will of our total personality to cooperate with 
God is the key to the vision of God and to the ingress of 
the creative Spirit of God into human life. It is this will 
that disciplines the preparation of the soul, holds it 
steady in conflict, that is necessary to self-possession, 
and that seeks a vision of the God beyond ourselves. A 
will steadily directed to God is the chief essential to 
creative worship. That this standpoint is not a mere 
moralistic perversion of worship, a shallow salvation-by- 
character, is evidenced by the testimony of the mystic 
whom we have frequently cited, Jacob Boehme. ‘There- 
fore,” he says, “let the true Christendom know, and 
deeply lay to heart, what is now told and spoken to her, 
viz., that she depart from the false conjecture (or 
opinion) of comforting without conversion of the 
LL At 





*Op. cit., p. 203. 


236 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


12. CONCLUSION OF THE CHAPTER 


This brings us to the end of our study of creative 
worship as the essence of religious value. We have only 
to summarize our results and hint briefly at one infer- 
ence from them. 

We have shown that contemporary thought, in many 
of its currents, is recognizing the principle of creativity 
and freedom as a real factor both in man’s psychological 
experiences and in the objective world. This tendency 
of thought is a revolt against mechanism and sets the 
Stage for the conception of a creative God. When we 
seek signs of the creative work of God in the experience 
of worship, we find at least the four traits that we men- 
tioned, namely, a unique perspective, a spiritual ideal, 
power, and the creation of a Community of Love. When 
we ask how these values are created in man’s life or on 
what forces he may rely for their attainment, we find 
several powerful factors—the preparation of the soul, 
conflict, self-possession, the vision of God, and the will 
of the worshiper. 

A few words about the God revealed in worship will 
bring the chapter to a close. Theology and philosophy 
alike have, on the whole, thought of God not only as 
eternal, absolute, and infinite, but also as changelessly 
perfect. He has usually been viewed as one to whom 
and in whom nothing can really happen, for all possible 
happenings are present to him in one eternal Now. The 
experience of worship, like the experience of obligation, 
suggests that God’s life may be richer and more plastic 
than this traditional absolutism has believed. God is 
not found as a static being; he is found as one who 
works and creates, a God whose favorite method is evo- 
lution, process, novelty-producing. Worship, then, is 
an experience which opens new vistas in human life and 


CREATIVE WORSHIP 237 


gives us a God whose acts of creation are as eternally 
new as the laws of his being are constant. The miracle 
of religion is the ever-creative God and his symbol is 
“the tree of life which bare twelve manner of fruits and 
yielded her fruit every month.” 


CHAPTER X 
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


1. THE PROBLEM OF THE CHAPTER: TOPSY AND AN 
ELEPHANT 


THE preceding chapters of this book have developed 
a theory of religious values based on what is believed to 
be a reasonable interpretation of experience and its im- 
plications. According to our view, religious values, in 
order to be truly valuable and worthy of devotion, must 
be both coherent and moral; and yet in them is revealed 
more than mere reasoning or moral effort could produce 
if there were not a more-than-human Person, the eternal 
God, who reveals himself to man and creates in him 
values that elevate his life above the plane of natural 
instinct and desire. 

If this be true, religion is essentially a matter of man’s 
conscious relation to God. It is not a set of useful hab- 
its or of socially adjusted behavior-patterns; nor is it 
mere loyalty to any abstract ideals, however true or 
useful those ideals may be. Religion bears habits, be- 
havior, ideal loyalties, as its fruit; but these things are 
not its root. Its root, if we are right, is in man’s inner 
consciousness, where he seeks and finds a God to wor- 
ship—or loses God and seeks some substitute for him. 

This conception of religious value, as we have seen in 
our discussions, is not held by all. Many find in “serv- 
ice,’ in devotion to “science and democracy,” or in some 
other social ideal what they believe is an equivalent for 
worship; and some call this supposed equivalent by the 


holy name of religion. It is as though the apple were 
238 


RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 239 


called an apple tree. The apple contains seeds of poten- 
tial apple trees; and service, likewise, contains the seeds 
of potential religion. But until those seeds are planted 
and watered, until they send their roots deep down into 
the earth and their sprouts up into the air and sunshine, 
the apple remains an apple, and its seeds may die; and 
Service is merely service and not vital religious life. 

The problem, then, that confronts the thoughtful ob- 
Server of modern tendencies is both theoretical and 
practical. He must not only ask, as we have done in 
this volume, whether the popular humanistic positivism 
of current thought and practice is true; he must also 
consider the possible consequences of his reflective 
thought for the actual religious life of humanity. 

The philosopher should not assume an airy indiffer- 
ence to the effect of his teachings on life. Although 
pragmatism has greatly overemphasized the value of 
consequences as a test of truth, it must be granted that 
the whole truth about any idea can never be known until 
all of its consequences are taken into account. 

Now, if the personalistic theory of religious values at 
which we have arrived is true, a radical criticism and 
reform of many current programs of religious educa- 
tion is called for. It may be said without exaggeration 
that religious education is in as serious peril from the 
dogmatic and uncritical provincialism of those who take 
the behavioristic pragmatism of the moment for the 
whole truth as it is from the dogmatic and uncritical 
provincialism of the so-called “fundamentalist.” Un- 
critical affirmation and uncritical negation are equally 
unsound. There has been too much of both. The dog- 
matist refuses to think critically because he is too sure 
that he has a revealed metaphysics which needs no fur- 
ther thought; and the positivistic pragmatist is too sure 
that society can take the place of God, and socialized 


240 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


behavior the place of worship. To both, the deeper prob- 
lems of life are a strange tongue. 

Both extremes, furthermore, are alike in that for them 
the problem of religious education is essentially a prob- 
lem of means rather than of ends. For the extreme 
dogmatist the ends of religion are given in uncritical 
conceptions about the Scriptures and revelation; for the 
extreme humanist those ends are restricted to “science 
and democracy,” or the adjustment of human animals 
to their natural environment. Neither extreme is will- 
ing to subject its preconceived ends to critical examina- 
tion in the light of the total meanings and values of ex- 
perience as a whole. Both, then, are, in their funda- 
mental spirit, anti-philosophical. To any questioning 
of their presuppositions they interpose a stringent 
verboten—it is not done! 

If our theory were merely one more dogma to be added 
to the collection of dogmas, it would be in an equally 
unreasonable position. But, while we have arrived at 
a specific interpretation of religious values, the present 
chapter is not written to persuade dogmatist and positiv- 
ist to exchange old dogmas for new. The practical aim 
of this chapter is, rather, to show that no theory of reli- 
gious education is worth while unless it is based on a 
genuinely philosophical interpretation of religious 
values and therefore of the aims of religious education. 
Religious life is molded by religious thought. 

The view to which we are opposed may be called the 
Topsy theory of the aims of religious education. Topsy 
was not born; she “just growed.” Holders of the Topsy 
theory believe that the aims of religious education 
Should not be inquired into any more precisely than 
Topsy wished to inquire into her nativity. These aims 
may be found full-grown, on the one hand, in revelation, 
or, on the other hand, in the spontaneous whims, fancies, 


RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 241 


and desires of unenlightened, uncriticized human na- 
ture. Topsy is willing to think about how to get what 
she wants, but she is not willing to think about whether 
She wants what she ought to want. Whether Topsy 
swears by the Council of Trent or Calvin, or by Rous- 
seau or Dewey, she remains Topsy until she is willing 
to face and think through the problems of a coherent 
interpretation of experience as a whole. She “growed”; 
let her also interpret as best she may to what end she 
was born. The “critical” or “creative intelligence” for 
which instrumentalism rightly pleads is needed not 
alone for understanding the instruments which shall 
make effective the ends that are given in revelation or 
in biological instinct, but it should also be set to work on 
the task of reinterpreting the meaning of what Rufus M. 
Jones calls “the fundamental ends of life.”’? 

As this book began with an interpretation of the the- 
ory of reasonableness as coherence, so let it end with an 
interpretation of the practical task of religious educa- 
tion as rooted in a coherent view of religious values. Re- 
ligious education is in great need of a genuine philo- 
sophical background against which it shall “see life 
steadily and see it whole.” 

John G. Saxe was not a great poet, but his whimsical 
stanzas on “The Blind Men and the Elephant” contain 
much wisdom. Both philosophers and religious educa- 
tors might well lay its teaching to heart. The six blind 
men gave six different descriptions of the elephant. He 
seemed very like a wall, a spear, a tree, a fan, or a rope 
according to the part of his body that the blind men laid 
hold of. The poem ends with the following stanzas :* 





*R. M. Jones, The Fundamental Ends of Life (New York: The 
Macmillan Company, 1924). 

“The Poems of John Godfrey Saxe (Diamond ed., Boston: Hough- 
ton, Osgood and Company, 1880), p. 1386. 


242 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


“And so these men of Indostan 
Disputed loud and long, 

Each in his own opinion 
Exceeding stiff and strong, 

Though each was partly in the right, 
And all were in the wrong! 


“So oft in theologic wars, 

The disputants, I ween, 
Rail on in utter ignorance 

Of what each other mean, 
And prate about an Elephant 

Not one of them has seen!” 


It may be remarked if any one of the blind men had 
continued his investigations as far as he could, even 
though blind, he would have been able to give a reason- 
ably correct account of the elephant. If the group had 
been willing to pool results the outcome would have been 
very near the truth. But as long as each man sticks to 
his dogma without seeking a completely coherent view, 
only confusion will result. Philosophy suggests that 
Topsy consider the entire elephant; at least that we omit 
no observation which we can make with the equipment 
which nature has given to us. 

Philosophy is the habit of considering the whole. Let 
us now proceed to inquire what contribution philosophy 
can make to the theory of religious education. 


29. Tur AIM OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


The aim of religious education may be very simply 
put; it is to teach the human race to live religiously. 
It is the thesis of the present chapter that anyone who 
wishes to succeed with such an aim needs a comprehen- 
sive philosophical outlook. This thesis receives imme- 
diate support from a comparison of the aim of religious 
education with the aim of philosophy. The aim of phi- 


RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 243 


losophy is to interpret human experience as a whole. 
Philosophy tries to consider all the facts there are, and 
all approaches and points of view, and then to unify and 
interpret them by a world view. It includes the results 
of science, the values of life, all that is “practical” as 
well as all that is “theoretical,” and aims to understand 
experience as a whole in the light of all the facts and 
meanings that we can find. Philosophy is the habit of 
taking everything into account and of thinking co- 
herently about everything; a rare attainment, but an 
alluring and necessary ideal! 

It is evident, as has been said, that the two problems 
are related. To define what it means “to live reli- 
giously,” and whether religion be true and worth attain- 
ing, clearly requires philosophical perspective. It is 
true, as we have seen, that there are many men of many 
minds at work on philosophy, and that their results are 
not in agreement, nor are all friendly to religion; yet it 
is clear that if religious education is to commend itself 
to men of intelligence, religion itself must appeal to 
their intelligence. This appeal can be made only by 
Setting religion in relation to all human thinking and 
living ; that is, by a philosophical study of its truth and 
value. 

We may go so far as to say that if ideas and beliefs 
play any part in religion or in education, philosophical 
criticism is imperative to save fundamental ideas from 
dogmas and from fads, from prejudices and from pro- 
vincialism. The words of the great Bishop Berkeley 
may well be applied to the religious educator: ‘“What- 
ever the world thinks, he who hath not much meditated 
upon God, the human mind, and the summum bonum, 
may possibly make a thriving earth-worm, but will 
most indubitably make a sorry patriot and a sorry 
Statesman,” and, we may add, a sorry teacher of religion. 


244 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


3. OBJECTIONS TO RECOGNIZING THE PLACE OF 
PHILOSOPHY IN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


The case for the need of philosophy is so clear that, 
if logic were the only force in human life, objections 
could be ignored. Unfortunately, however, we are not 
all logical, and we kick against the pricks of reason. 

The “plain man” (and especially the plain child) is 
evidently no philosopher. He is not trained in the uni- 
versities; and even if he is, that does not prove that he 
can think. Now, religion is for the plain man, for his 
every-day consumption. Philosophy is quite above his 
head, and confuses and distresses rather than helps and 
enlightens him. Hence, it is argued, philosophy is reli- 
giously useless. 

There is no doubt that many people have been 
and are good and religious without knowledge of or 
regard for technical philosophy. Indeed, many good 
and religious people abhor the word “philosophy” as 
they should abhor sin. Nevertheless, it may be safely 
asserted that no person has ever been either good or 
religious without doing some thinking, however meager 
it may be. The good man, even though wholly untrained 
in theories, must be able to grasp a moral principle, to 
distinguish right from wrong, and to apply his princi- 
ples to his conduct; the religious man must also have 
thought somewhat about God and God’s relation to him. 
No religion is possible without some conception of the 
values that religion is after, and it is a religious need, 
as well as an intellectual demand, to give a reason for 
the faith that isin us. All such thinking—about obliga- 
tion, about God, about ideals—is in principle philo- 
sophical. It may not be skillful, or technical, or 
learned ; it may not use the language or come to the con- 
clusions of the schools; but it is philosophy, good or bad, 


RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 245 


adequate or inadequate. Whatever is wholly below the 
thought-level, without idea or belief or ideal, is neither 
morality nor religion. The dumb devotion of the dog is 
either more or less than it appears to be; either the dog 
has some ideas or he does not know what he is doing at 
all. Utterly dumb devotion, whatever else it may be, 
is not religion. 

From these facts it follows, not that a man must study 
philosophy before he has a right to worship the Al- 
mighty, but that he has a right to expect and demand 
help from those who have studied philosophy. Even 
though the plain man may never grasp technical philos- 
ophy, his religious educators should do so, if they regard 
their task seriously. The physician must know anatomy, 
physiology, pathology, and much more that his patients 
need never know; but the patients must take some 
thought for their bodies and must have some respect for 
the knowledge of their physicians if they are to be 
treated. Likewise the religious educator should have 
an expert knowledge that will command respect, and 
that will be available for application to the needs of the 
humblest. 

The objection in behalf of the humble believer is, 
therefore, without force. The more humble believers 
there are, the more need there is for intelligent leader- 
ship. The plea for blind guides to guide the blind is so 
often made that its intrinsic folly is sometimes over- 
looked. But from a different quarter there arises 
another sort of objection to philosophy in religious 
education. The dogmatic traditionalist objects to 
philosophical criticism because he has observed that 
philosophical thinking often leads to readjustment, and 
readjustment is fatal to the comfortable finality of his 
dogmatism. But the position of the anti-philosophical 
dogmatist is most precarious. His own system of doc- 


246 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


trine is a highly rationalistic conceptual structure and 
makes an intellectual appeal. He must either say that 
his system is so final that it is futile and even wicked to 
question it, or he must make his appeal to the forum of 
reasonable thinking—that is, to philosophy. The recent 
book by E. Y. Mullins, Christianity at the Crossroads, 
is an able, but unsuccessful, attempt to get along with 
and without philosophy at the same time. The greatest 
defenders of religion, Protestant and Catholic and Jew- 
ish and Mohammedan and Hindu and Buddhist, have 
usually agreed in holding that religion is based on 
reasonable considerations and is in harmony with 
reason, however far beyond reason the Infinite may lie. 
If this belief be true, philosophy is necessary. If it be 
not true (as some extreme dogmatists hold), then, lo! 
philosophy has crept in unawares—namely, the philos- 
ophy of skepticism. Free philosophical investigation 
cannot destroy truth and must in the end help it; such 
investigation is truly disturbing as well as arduous, but 
it is necessary if religion is to avoid skepticism, and if 
religious thinking and secular thinking are to be cor- 
related. The truth-lover must constantly readjust prac- 
tice and belief to truth. 

Not all dogmatism is in the camp of traditionalism. 
Topsy is two-sided. There are also dogmatic devotees 
of what Perry has called “the cult of science.” Such 
dogmatists join hands with religious traditionalists in 
wishing to exclude philosophy. They base their results 
(so they say) on what can be tested by the senses and 
experimentally verified. Philosophy, they declare, not 
only deals with what we can never perceive by sense, 
but also with what is essentially unverifiable. Philos- 
ophers squabble forever, world without end, and come to 
no conclusion, while men of science are agreed in their 
Main results. Without seeking to defend philosophy 


RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 247 


from these strictures we must remark that the deyotee 
of science who rejects philosophy on these grounds has 
also logically included religion in what he rejects. He 
who will believe only what may be verified by the senses 
cannot believe in duty, or in ideals, or in God; he can 
recognize no values and can believe in no human con- 
sciousness, his own or that of another. If only what can 
be observed by sense-perception is true, then literally 
nothing is true but sense objects and reason itself 
must be abandoned. The cause of reason and the cause 
of religion stand together. 

Fortunately, no men of science carry the logic of the 
cult of science to this extreme. The great scientists are 
the first to recognize the limitations of scientific method, 
and the fact that the values of life have a validity that 
does not rest on laboratory results. This was signifi- 
cantly shown in the well-known joint statement issued 
by representative scientists, religious leaders, and men 
of affairs and published in the press of May 26, 1928. 
This statement contained the following: 


The purpose of science is to develop, without prejudice 
or preconception of any kind, a knowledge of the facts, the 
laws, and the processes of nature. The even more important 
task of religion, on the other hand, is to develop the con- 
sciences, the ideals, and the aspirations of mankind. Each 
of these two activities represents a deep and vital function 
of the soul of man, and both are necessary for the life, the 
progress, and the happiness of the human race. 


Such an utterance, signed by scientists like R. A. Milli- 
kan, Charles D. Walcott, H. F. Osborn, E. G. Conklin, 
J. R. Angell, J. M. Coulter, W. J. Mayo, and numerous 
others, ought to silence the narrow idea that science pre- 
cludes consideration of the higher values of life. On the 
contrary, the very form of the statement challenges 
thought to a philosophical investigation of the relations 


248 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


of the point of view of science and the point of view of 
value. 

One further comment should be added. The results 
of science are, of course, of the utmost importance in 
religious education. They reveal effective mechanisms 
for the control of experience. But he who studies these 
mechanisms without studying the extra-scientifie as- 
sumptions made by all moral and religious beliefs and 
experiences will be out of contact with religious real- 
ities; he may be efficient, but he will be ineffective; he 
may be practical, but his work will be shallow and 
empty. He will be like a contractor who has the ma- 
terials for building, but no architect’s plans. 

Again, it is said by some social theorists that philos- 
ophy is, on social grounds, incompatible with the call- 
ing of the religious educator. These persons regard 
philosophy as essentially anti-social. They are not 
wholly without a basis for their strictures. It must be 
admitted that philosophy is in a sense a luxury; one has 
no time to philosophize unless the body has been clothed 
and fed. Now, the social thinkers of whom mention was 
made regard it as sheer self-indulgence and intellectual 
snobbishness to engage in reflections about the nature of 
matter and of mind when the social needs of the world 
are so great; thought should be devoted to bringing war 
to an end, to solving the problems of labor and capital, 
to international understanding and cooperation rather 
than to metaphysical niceties. 

A reference to the true function and task of philos- 
ophy refutes the charge brought by these objectors. 
What is philosophy? It is a patient, thorough, per- 
sistent attempt to inquire what human experience 
means, what is truly valuable and worthy of our belief 
and our allegiance. If ever there was a time when such 
an inquiry was a pressing social necessity, it is to-day. 


RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 249 


To a large extent the ills of the world are due to the be- 
liefs and the valuations of the human mind. The social 
worker must either aim to give people what they want 
or what they ought to have. To continue to aim at giv- 
ing them what they want is to continue the low stand- 
ards that now exist. To aim at giving them what they 
ought to have means that someone must do the work of 
the philosopher and reflect on what that may be, and 
then put it in a form so intelligible and so persuasive as 
to convince the minds of unprejudiced men. The task 
of interpreting the highest values of life needs to be 
undertaken afresh by or for every human being. To sup- 
pose that this task has been completed, so that we need 
trouble no more about philosophy, or to suppose that 
it ever will be completed, is to suppose that the human 
mind can stand still, and find no new problems. A social 
philosophy, founded in our general world view, is an 
imperative need of the distracted present. 

In spite of the foregoing considerations, it must be 
admitted that some philosophers have held that there 
was no relation between philosophy and life. Philos- 
ophy, they have held, is a mere play of the intellect, a 
purely theoretical activity, while practical life goes on 
in a “‘water-tight compartment” by itself. Historically, 
David Hume represented this point of view. He ad- 
mitted that his philosophy gave him no light on the 
problems of life, but, rather, obscured them. He says: 


The intense view of these manifold contradictions and 
imperfections in human reason has so wrought upon me, aud 
heated my brain, that I am ready to reject all belief and 
reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more prob- 
able or likely than another. Where am I, or what? From 
what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition 
shall I return? Whose favor shall I court, and whose anger 
must I dread? What beings surround me? and on whom 
have I any influence, or who have any influence on me? 1! 


250 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy 
myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, envi- 
roned with the deepest darkness, and utterly deprived of 
the use of every member and faculty. 

Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incap- 
able of dispelling these clouds, Nature herself suffices to that 
purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and 
delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some 
avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliter- 
ate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of back- 
gammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and 
when, after three or four hours’ amusement, I would return 
to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and 
ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into 
them any further. 


Among present-day thinkers Durant Drake is an 
earnest advocate of the position that our epistemological 
and metaphysical conclusions can have no useful effect 
on life. It must be said, however, that this represents 
a failure to take note of the full function of philosophy. 
If philosophy does not interpret life, and show the rela- 
tions between our living and our thinking, it fails in its 
task. If the world of thought and the world of action 
are to be severed, then we have on the one hand life 
without meaning, and on the other meaning without life. 
Each is inadequate, incoherent, self-defeating. We have 
not thought our way through to a true philosophy until 
we have interpreted the relations between the two. 

Others take the opposite position, namely, that philos- 
ophy should be debarred from the training of the reli- 
gious leader because there is danger in too intimate a 
relation between philosophy and life. Two instances of 
such possible danger will be mentioned. 

As a first instance let us consider the psychological 
effect of philosophizing. Too much philosophy, we are 


"Treatise of Human Nature (Hveryman ed.), pp. 253-254. 


RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 251 


told, is bad for a man. Those who take this position 
mean, in the bottom of their hearts, by “too much,” “any 
at all.” Philosophy, these people say, overdevelops the 
intellect, starves the emotional and active nature, stimu- 
lates criticism, and chokes appreciation and creativity. 
That this is a real danger no one with a wide acquaint- 
ance among young doctors of philosophy can doubt. 
Leonard Bacon’s satires on Ph.D.’s (New York: Harper 
& Brothers, 1925) are joy to these critics. But that the 
danger is so serious as is supposed by those who urge it 
is very doubtful. The great philosophers have been 
men of rich and many-sided interests, of creative genius, 
appreciative of art, morality, religion, in close contact 
with life. While it is true that narrow devotion to cer- 
tain types of philosophical problems leads to a shriveled 
soul and a barren intellectualism, such devotion is no 
full expression of the philosophical spirit. Indeed, it 
may safely be asserted that, of all the subjects that a 
religious educator could study, no subject is so broaden- 
ing, so challenging to every side of life and thought, as 
is philosophy. It unifies and stimulates activity in all 
fields of any value at all. Every other study is confined 
to some special field, however broad that field may be; 
philosophy alone includes all fields. It is the most hu- 
man, the most inclusive, the most spiritual of disciplines. 
The objection under discussion, then, is not an objection 
to philosophy, but to certain would-be philosophers, who 
find it difficult to assume a genuinely philosophical 
point of view. 

A second instance is of very different nature. A 
prominent religious educator has expressed himself to 
the writer substantially as follows: “If you are going to 
lay so much stress on philosophical background, is there 
not a danger lest only such men as have the ‘right’ philo- 
sophical background should be able to find employ- 


252 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


ment?” In short, is there not a danger of a new ortho- 
doxy, a new dogmatism, based on economic pressure? 
This would appear to the writer to be a highly academic 
objection. It would seem that the tendency of philoso- 
phers to think fairly independently would take care of 
this possibility. Nevertheless, it must be granted that, 
theoretically at least, there is something in it. The dan- 
ger may be lessened in two ways: first, by training a 
philosophical and a religious spirit that will guard in- 
tellectual and spiritual integrity over against economic 
and social pressure; and, secondly, by recognizing the 
right of society to demand certain standards of its 
teachers. Regarding the first suggestion, it must be 
granted that in every field the economic imperative 
makes itself felt; more and more is it necessary that the 
philosopher shall raise the standard of the ideal impera- 
tives of reason and value. This cannot be done by in- 
sisting on conformity to any one system; but it does 
demand devotion to the truly philosophical spirit.4 As 
to the second suggestion, it will surely be admitted that 
no one has the right to be a secular teacher if he denies 
the value of secular education; and no one has the right 
to be a religious teacher if he denies the value of reli- 
gious education. That is to say, society has the right to 
demand that her teachers, if not her kings, shall be in 
Some sense philosophers—shall have thought through 
the meaning and value of what they are doing. 

The theoretical arguments having been exhausted, 
many will at this point in the discussion fall back on 
practical objections. Such persons would admit that 
philosophy ought to be included in the background of 
religious education, but hold that it is practically im- 
possible to require it. On the one hand, the practical 


‘See E. S. Brightman, An Introduction to Philosophy, Chaps. I 
and XI. 





RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 253 


demands on the religious worker are too great; he must 
act constantly, he has no time to think, that is, no time 
to think about philosophy. On the other hand, philos- 
ophy is said to be too arduous for the average religious 
educator to master; it requires a special talent, a special 
type of mind; why impose it on those that lack this tal- 
ent? Nothing could be truer than that it is impractical 
to expect all religious educators to be scholarly experts 
in philosophy, or, for that matter, in psychology, or 
pedagogy, or knowledge of the Bible, or in any subject. 
But it is one thing to be scholarly and expert in a sub- 
ject; it is another to be thoughtful and intelligent in 
that field. The latter is the least that should be re- 
quired of trusted leaders. . 

If it is impractical for a person to “meditate much 
upon God, the human mind, and the swnmum bonum,” 
it is impractical in the highest degree for such a person 
to undertake the tasks of leadership in religious educa- 
tion; or, should he undertake such tasks, to expect to be 
more than a hewer of wood and a drawer of water. 


4, REASONS FOR RECOGNIZING RELATIONS BETWEEN 
PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


In the course of the previous discussion, which was 
concerned with objections to recognizing the place of 
philosophy in religious education, there have emerged 
implicitly and explicitly numerous positive reasons for 
such recognition. We shall now undertake to formulate 
those reasons more systematically. 

The fundamental ground for giving philosophy a 
place in the theory and curriculum of religious educa- 
tion is that philosophy interprets the values of religion 
and the objects of religious faith in the light of our 
knowledge and experience as a whole, as we have under- 
taken to do in the earlier chapters of this book. Philos- 


254 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


ophy correlates and interprets the facts gathered by the 
history and psychology of religion; in short, it evaluates 
religious experience. Our choice does not lie between 
philosophy and no philosophy; if we have any interest 
in the value or the truth of religion, our choice can only 
lie between a carefully thought-out philosophy and a 
slipshod and uncritical one. If religion is worthy of 
the best we can give it, then it is worthy of our thought- 
ful attention, our best philosophical reflection. 

Further, philosophy, better than any other study, is 
a safeguard against the twin perils of religion, namely, 
dogmatism and skepticism. As was pointed out above, 
both traditionalism and modernism are in danger of 
dogmatism, if they lack the truth-loving, open-minded, 
objective philosophical spirit. And dogmatism, with 
its appeal to assertion instead of to reason, is the 
twin sister of skepticism. It may indeed be said, with 
a show of truth, that philosophy itself sometimes has 
produced skepticism. Yet, in a deeper sense, philosophy 
is the only refutation of skepticism. There are various 
ways of banishing doubt. There is the grim will to be- 
heve, accompanied by the refusal to think; there is the 
crowding out of doubts by action or intense emotion; 
but there is no permanently satisfactory way of dealing 
with doubt save by facing the problem and thinking it 
through. Underlying the opposition to philosophy on 
the part of some is a latent skepticism—the fear that 
thought is necessarily skeptical and that philosophy 
must lead to rejection of religion. More philosophy is 
needed to uncover and refute skepticism of this and 
every type. 

Philosophy is needed in religious education also be- 
cause it gives the religious leader a perspective that en- 
ables him to diagnose movements of thought and see 
their larger bearings. The philosophically trained mind 


RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 255 


is not easily taken in by religious, theological, or psy- 
chological fads; and the woods are full of fads. Philo- 
sophical perspective is worth more than many rifles in 
hunting such game. To mention only one instance, 
current tendencies in psychology of education are 
marked by overemphasis on conduct and behavior. He 
who knows the history of philosophy, and is aware of 
the philosophical problems of consciousness and of value 
is not going to be swept away by the latest eddy in the 
current of thought. He will realize that conduct is 
only part of life and not all, that there is an inner life 
of consciousness, where the mystic spirit communes with 
God, where conscience and duty dwell, where ideals 
and thought have their home; and. he will know that 
conduct alone, behavior alone, is as futile and empty as 
is thought without conduct. The present over-emphasis 
on the external and physiological will be understood as 
a justified reaction against faculty psychology and ex- 
cessive inwardness in religion; but it will be seen to bea 
situation which, in the end, is more destructive of reli- 
gious development than was the inwardness against 
which it is a revolt. The truth is that many religious 
educators have been taught these modern exaggerations, 
and have founded their thinking and religious life on 
them, without knowing what they were losing or what 
they were accepting. Philosophical training would 
make the attitudes assumed toward current tendencies 
more sane and intelligent. 

Finally, it is noteworthy that the need for philosophy 
is being recognized by observers of the practical work 
in religious education. The position of Dean Athearn, 
of Boston University School of Religious Education 
and Social Service, is most significant; he has led his 
faculty to require substantial amounts of philosophy of 
all students receiving any degree from his institution. 


256 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


He found that many students came to Boston University 
with a philosophy, such as it was, of half-understood 
materialism, and proposed to rear a religious training 
on such a foundation. He saw the blunders in pro- 
grams and ideals that resulted from a lack of broad 
philosophical perspective; and he has carried through 
his radical proposal with success. A. C. Knudson, of 
Boston University, who travels widely through the coun- 
try meeting preachers, reports a new interest in philos- 
ophy among the clergy. F. W. Hannan, of Drew Theo- 
logical Seminary, has remarked that while some time 
ago the great demand of preachers was for methods and 
programs, the great demand now is for a fundamental 
philosophy of life that will enable them to carry the 
burdens of the modern religious leader with understand- 
ing. President Scott, of Northwestern, says: 

Progress in the nineteenth century was largely dependent 
upon the study of nature. Progress in the twentieth century 
will probably depend largely upon the study of man. It 
is important to support chemistry, physics, astronomy, geol- 
ogy, botany, and zoology. It is imperative in this twentieth 
century to encourage the discovery of truth in psychology, 


philosophy, education, economics, sociology, history, litera- 
ture and religion. 


In this connection it may not be amiss to call attention 
to the fact that “The Conversion of a Sinner’® took 
place while Mr. Cabot was reading “the Bible, The 
Meaning of Prayer, The Varieties of Religious Expe- 
rience, and other books on philosophy.” 

By way of contrast with the appreciation of philoso- 
phy by religious educators, mention should be made of 
Mr. George Babbitt’s adventure in the church school. 

‘See W. S. Athearn, Character Building in a Democracy (New 
York: The Macmillan Company, 1925), pp. 119-124. 


*By Philip Cabot in the Atlantic Monthly (1928) and since be- 
come famous and republished in book form. 


RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 257 


It is true that Mr. Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt is already 
antiquated as a best seller, and may always have been 
antiquated as literary art; but if anyone is tempted to 
believe that religious education should be practical, 
without any philosophical frills, let him read those 
pages of Babbitt that describe Mr. Babbitt’s career as 
an unphilosophical religious educator in a church with 
an unphilosophical pastor. Babbitt might well be made 
required reading for all students of religious education. 


5. Tart FUNDAMENTAL ISSUER IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF 
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


Very briefly, now, let us state the fundamental issue 
that confronts religious education, from the point of 
view of its philosophical background. It is this: Are 
we going to abandon ideas and ideals, and give ourselves 
(like the traditional revivalist) to the mere cultivation 
of emotions, or (like too many educational psycholo- 
gists) to the attempt to develop certain habits of con- 
duct, without due regard to the ideal motives and the 
devotional experiences which are the heart of religion? 
We have swung from extreme rationalism to extreme ir- 
rationalism. Rigid orthodoxy is rationalistic, ultra- 
intellectual, and doctrinal, while extreme behaviorism 
eliminates the reality of intellect entirely and, by its 
exaltation of conduct and of reaction as opposed to 
thought, is becoming a kind of irrationalism. An in- 
clusive philosophy. is needed that finds room both for 
the rational and the extra-rational in an ideal of the 
whole personality meeting and interpreting its whole 
experience. 


6. SPECIFIC CONTRIBUTIONS OF PHILOSOPHY TO THEORY 
OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


a. Preliminary.—Philosophy, we have seen, is essen- 


258 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


tial for the theory and hence for the practice of reli- 
gious education, if that practice is to be intelligent. In 
order to make clear just what this fact implies the re- 
mainder of the chapter will be devoted to a survey of 
the typical philosophical problems toward which every 
attempt at religious education must take some attitude. 
Regarding each of the problems discussed the author 
has had his own convictions, which he will present. It 
is, however, to be hoped that no one will draw the un- 
warranted inference that one type of philosophical 
opinion is all that the religious educator needs. On the 
contrary, every possible solution is of moment, and 
whatever solution may be reached will have its inevit- 
able effect in practice. All important solutions should 
be understood by him who hopes to lead the life of his 
generation to better things. To attempt no solution is 
to grope blindly—however loyally and enthusiastically 
—in the dark. 

b. The Problem of the Criterion of Truth.’—Religious 
faith asserts propositions about God and man, the world 
here and hereafter. It believes that these propositions 
are true. Unbelief contradicts these propositions, hold- 
ing that they are not true; different propositions are 
believed by different religions, and by different advo- 
cates of the same religion. 

How are we going to distinguish between what is true 
and what is not true in this strife of claims and counter- 
claims? When the skeptic tells us that no one can know 
absolute truth, or read the mind of God—if there be a 
God—every thoughtful person is willing to grant that 
we see through a glass darkly, and that no man can 
know what the Omniscient knows. But most thought- 
ful persons will agree that there is a difference between 





"See Chap. I for a more technical discussion of the subject. 


RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 259 


the unrestricted reign of error and the striving for 
truth; and that actual progress has been made in hu- 
man history in the direction of truth. The question, 
therefore, about the criterion or test by which we may 
know what is true is fundamental to religion and to 
all sound social progress; for whatever is not based on 
truth will sooner or later have to be undone. Logic is 
the branch of philosophy that undertakes to answer this 
question and to sift proposed criteria. 

At the present time it is doubtless true that the ma- 
jority of the human race bases its religious beliefs on 
authority. Some holy tradition or authoritative inter- 
pretation thereof is accepted without question as the 
standard of doctrine. Much may be said for the social 
need and value of authority, wisely used. Yet, whatever 
the value of authority, nothing can be more evident than 
that mere authority is not the criterion of truth; the 
authorities conflict among themselves, and when author- 
ity comes to a decision for itself it has to judge by some 
standard other than authority. True authority inheres 
only in truth. 

Many who doubt religion base their doubt on an ap- 
peal to sense experience as final criterion of truth. God 
and conscience, prayer and immortality are not objects 
that can be inspected by the senses, and hence are re- 
jected by those that use this criterion. But it does not 
require much reflection to show that sensation is log- 
ically defective as a test of truth. Does any man live 
who has believed as true only what his senses tell him? 
If so, he has not believed that he or anyone else was a 
conscious being, or that geometry or algebra or trig- 
onometry was true, or that there was a world before he 
was born and will be after he dies; nor has he any means 
of telling whether any given experience he has is a genu- 
ine sensation or an illusion or hallucination. It is thus 


260 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


easy to show that sensation is not the final test of truth, 
but that every mind recognizes truths that are super- 
Sensuous and that sensation itself must be interpreted 
by a higher function of the mind. 

There is scarcely a philosopher in the world who 
would base his criterion of truth on mere sensation. The 
two theories that are most widely held are known as 
pragmatism and the coherence theory. In this country 
it is probable that the former has more conspicuous 
advocates than -the latter, and will be discussed first. 

Pragmatism is the belief that an idea or belief is true 
if it works, has satisfactory practical consequences, is 
capable of verifying itself by leading up to the par- 
ticulars that it predicts. This seems to be at once the 
method of laboratory science and of religious experi- 
ence; it brings the plain man and the philosopher to- 
gether; and it bears the label, practical. Anything 
trade-marked practical will sell in this fair land like 
hot-cakes or The Saturday Evening Post. Pragmatism 
has thus made a wide appeal to a very diversified fol- 
lowing. 

There is doubtless much merit in the pragmatic point 
of view. Every practical consequence, every working 
of an idea, is indeed part of the data that truth must 
acknowledge and interpret. Yet, important and popu- 
lar as is pragmatism, its criterion is defective because 
it is ambiguous. What is meant by the word “prac- 
tical’? Attempts to answer this question on the basis 
of the utterances of the pragmatists have led to the 
discovery of at least thirteen different meanings. To 
the capitalist it may have one meaning; to the laborer 
another and to the burglar yet another. The scientist 
means one thing by it; the religious devotee another. 
Within the realm of philosophy the differences are fully 
as great. At present the dominant tendency is to in- 


RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 261 


terpret it in terms of biology. The practical means what 
expresses itself in activity of the organism. The body 
and its behavior become the final test of truth. If this 
is what is meant, it is surely an inadequate criterion. 
Either it reduces to sensation, and is then subject to all 
the criticism to which that criterion is open, or else 
it seeks to expand and include in biology all ideals and 
values, which means the surrender of the pragmatic 
principle. 

The coherence criterion, on the other hand, asserts 
that in the end there is only one road to truth-finding, 
and that is the road of taking everything into account 
and seeing everything in relation to everything else, as 
far as a human being can. When we have done that, we 
discover that many of our beliefs contradict each other, 
and that many are consistent with each other; the task 
of truth-finding, then, is to organize our total experience, 
eliminate contradictions, and establish as many rela- 
tions as possible in the self-consistent material. Truth 
is what coheres, that is, sticks together. While this 
criterion has obvious practical difficulties in its applica- 
tion, and has often enough been abused, nevertheless it 
commends itself as the best way we have of building up 
truth and of detecting error. It obviously includes the 
facts of authority and sensation, and all practical con- 
sequences of every kind, and also has room for facts 
that these criteria rejected. It combines the ideal of a 
growing human apprehension of truth with the ideal of 
an absolutely coherent truth. 

It is evident that each of the criteria discussed above 
has consequences for theory of religious education. If 
sensation be the test of truth, let man live the life of 
sense; there is no truth in religion or in moral values. 
If authority be the criterion, there is room for reli- 
gion just as long as the flock can be induced to attend 


262 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


only to the “proper” authority and no longer; the prob- 
lem of religious education is, then, that of indoctrination 
and the cultivation of the attitude of the closed mind. 
If pragmatism be true, the religious educator must ask 
cautiously, Which kind of pragmatism? If he follow 
the fashion and adopt the biological brand, he must then 
pare his conception of religious life and religious aspira- 
tions down to the biological model. He will have little 
room for what has been the essence of religion, the inner 
life of communion with God, of spiritual aspiration and 
achievement; immortality will vanish and God become 
scarcely more than a name for certain relations of bio- 
logical organisms to each other. If coherence be the 
criterion, there is no magic solution of all our woes 
which can be turned out by the million and sold on all 
news stands, but there is an available instrument which 
recognizes the rights of inner life as well as of outer 
relations, of principles and of ideals as well as of par- 
ticulars and real things, and which may lead the 
thoughtful and the honest mind to God. Such an in- 
strument we have used in the present volume and found 
it to be suited to the interpretation of religious values. 

At any rate, if religious education should base its con- 
ception of religious truth on the reasonable and coherent 
interpretation of experience as a whole, it would have 
a foundation that would challenge every fair-minded 
person. It would also have a principle that would pro- 
tect it against the narrow and doctrinaire fads of the 
moment, which usually overemphasize some group of 
facts, while ignoring their relations to life as a whole. 
The soul of religious educators may well be sick of men 
who know their field, but do not know what their field 
means for life. 

ce. The Problem of the Nature of Consciousness.— 
Another fundamental problem of philosophy is the prob- 


RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 263 


lem of what consciousness is. The contact of philosophy 
with religious thought is here too evident to be ques- 
tioned. Religion has much to say about the soul. So 
has psychology—by implication, if not explicitly. The 
psychological study of consciousness as a science may 
be purely empirical and may disavow all “metaphysics” ; 
but the results of psychology require and receive a philo- 
sophical interpretation, even from those that abjure 
philosophy. 

In answer to the question, What is consciousness? 
tradition has a theory that has unfortunately been re- 
garded by many as the only view compatible with reli- 
gious faith. I refer to the traditional soul theory. This 
theory arises somewhat as follows: Our consciousness 
is gifted with many powers and possibilities that are not 
present before the mind at any one time; further, it is 
active in sleep, and possibly ceases in deep sleep or in 
other moments of “unconsciousness.” Nevertheless, ex- 
perience testifies that we are the same person all the 
time, and have all our powers or “faculties” at our com- 
mand in our normal waking life. In order to explain 
both the fact of personal identity and the real existence 
of our faculties, the soul theory asserted that the soul is 
not our conscious life, but is a something that expresses 
itself in consciousness, although itself not conscious. 
It is what persists when we sleep, or are otherwise un- 
conscious; and it is what is immortal. Yet when one 
asks an adherent of this theory what the soul is if it is 
not a conscious being, or what the soul is when we are 
unconscious, one receives strong assurance that the soul 
is something, but no clear statement about what it is. 
On account of the vagueness, bordering on agnosticism, 
that marks this theory, and on account of perplexities in 
understanding the relation between the “soul” and con- 
sciousness, this traditional account of the soul is almost 





264 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


universally rejected by psychologists and philosophers. 
The rejection of this theory is not, however, as will later 
be seen, tantamount to a rejection of all belief in the 
soul. 

Psychology, having abandoned the “soul,” experi- 
enced a reaction to the left. There arose the doctrine of 
associationism, of which. David Hume was the most 
famous exponent. This doctrine would have nothing 
to do with mysterious essences, such as the traditional 
soul, but held that knowledge was confined to what could 
be actually experienced. Actual experience, Hume held, 
was wholly made up of sensations (or impressions, as he 
called them) and ideas (pale copies of sensations) ; and 
his theory saw in mind nothing but sensations combin- 
ing and separating in accordance with the law of asso- 
ciation. Associationism has the merit of trying to ex- 
plain consciousness in terms of itself; but it fails be- 
cause it does not take all of consciousness into account. 
Hume himself admitted that he was not satisfied with 
his account of personal identity. 

The failure of both the transcendent soul and the asso- 
ciated sensations to give a reasonable account of mind 
left psychology for a long time gasping for breath. It 
has seemed to be without fundamental principles, and 
to be spending its energies in detailed experiments and 
tests, without any satisfactory view of the nature of 
consciousness aS a whole. Indeed, as the naturalistic 
science and philosophy of the nineteenth century devel- 
oped, it dawned on the minds of psychologists that 
consciousness, with its peculiar nonspatial and time- 
transcending properties, was out of place in a naturalis- 
tic universe. Instead, then, of adjusting theory to 
experience, the persistent attempt has been made to 
adjust experience to theory. Behaviorism is the logical 
outcome of this attempt. 


RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 265 


By behaviorism is meant the theory which defines 
mind in terms of the behavior of the physiological organ- 
ism; all that has been called conscious experience is for 
this view only certain movements of the bodily mechan- 
ism. What we have just defined is metaphysical be- 
hayiorism in its extreme form; there are milder forms 
which acknowledge the fact of consciousness, but hold 
that it is to be explained wholly in terms of behavior (as 
in Allport’s Social Psychology). Metaphysical behav- 
iorism is to be distinguished from methodological behav- 
iorism, which means only the familiar fact that the con- 
sciousness of others must be studied by observing the 
behavior of their bodies. Everyone who does not rely 
on telepathy would agree with the truth and value of 
this type of behaviorism. But metaphysical behaviorism 
goes much further and says that the whole meaning of 
consciousness is to be found in behavior. To be con- 
scious means for the organism to move in a certain way. 
To be angry is no “conscious” feeling or emotion; it is 
to grit the teeth and clench the fists. To think is not to 
reason “consciously”; it is to mutter certain words, 
either audibly, or, as Watson puts it, “sub-vocally.” 

Behaviorism has the advantage, such as it is, of ex- 
plaining “consciousness” in physiological, that is, mate- 
rialistic terms. It is a very neat system. It solves the 
riddles of the mind-body problem by the simple expe- 
dient of saying that the mind is the body in action, so 
that the relation of mind and body is no problem at all. 
The way, as they say, is not through, but around the 
problem. Thus it simplifies many ancient puzzles. But 
it fails because it omits so many facts. Consciousness is 
experienced as self-identical, as aware of the past, the 
absent, the future; it is not merely or chiefly response 
to present stimuli. Further, conscious response’ to 
stimuli is never identical with any part of the “reflex 


266 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


arc” as a material fact. Conscious feeling and purpose, 
knowledge of universals and abstractions like the square 
root of minus one, sympathy with other persons, com- 
munication with them and with the unseen, are all facts 
with which behaviorism is impotent to cope. 

Yet it should be emphasized that behaviorism is su- 
perior to the antiquated theory of the ‘transcendent 
soul, in that it remains within the field of the intelligible 
and the actually experienced; and to associationism, in 
that it views consciousness as living movement, action, 
and reaction, instead of as a collection of separate sen- 
sation atoms loosely held together. These advantages 
are not to be despised; but no account that leaves out 
the wide range of conscious experiences mentioned above 
ean be a final or a broadly fruitful view of mind. It can 
be only a passing phase of psychology. 

There remains one other theory, namely, self-psychol- 
ogy, or psychological personalism. This theory starts 
from the experienced unity of consciousness. It holds 
that all experience is self-experience. There are no 
“floating adjectives,” no states of consciousness existing 
by themselves apart from others. Consciousness is 
always a complex that belongs together as some one 
identical person or self. It experiences itself as belong- 
ing to a whole which is a self. The true “soul” is no 
transcendent entity which no one can define, but is this 
fact of self-experience. There never were any separate 
sensations out of which to construct a self, for all sen- 
sations already belonged to a self. The self expresses 
itself through behavior, but it is not that behavior any 
more than the pianist is the piano. Self-psychology 
finds that one of the most characteristic traits of selves 
is their purposiveness, their striving for ends; indeed, 
conscious striving for ends has meaning only relative to 
the purpose of some conscious self. 


RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 267 


Personalism thus has the merits both of association- 
ism and of behaviorism—the banishing of a meaningless 
soul and the active, functional view of consciousness— 
without the defects of either. It has the further advan- 
tage of being loyal to the experienced facts as other 
theories are not. 

One occasionally finds surprisingly naive attitudes 
toward self-psychology. By some psychologists it is 
wholly ignored, as by Bode in his otherwise incisive 
little book, The Fundamentals of Education, which pur- 
ports to give an account of the theories of consciousness, 
mentions the soul-theory, associationism, and behavior- 
ism—and stops there, evidently (if the matter was con- 
sidered at all) confusing soul and self! By others, the 
self-psychology is avoided on the amusing ground that 
it is a product of theological prejudice. One must in- 
deed be a victim of theophobia if one refuses to face the 
empirical facts of consciousness in terror lest one might 
then be seduced to believe in God! 

On the other hand, recent psychology shows hopeful 
signs. Movements such as the purposive psychology of 
McDougall and the Gestalt-theory of Koffka and other 
Germans are precisely in the direction of self-psychol- 
ogy. It is becoming increasingly clear that the real 
issue in psychology is, as Cunningham points out, be- 
tween personalism and behaviorism.*® 

The significance of these different psychologies for 
religious education is almost self-evident. The older 
soul-theory is the basis of a mystical and magical view ; 
it is the psychology of traditionalism. Religious educa- 
tion based on it would aim at some mysterious subcon- 
scious relation to God or some mechanical work of grace 
in the soul. The conscious life would be neglected in 


8G. W. Cunningham, Problems of Philosophy (New York: Henry 
and Company, 1924), Chap. XVI, 


268 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


the interest of the status of the soul and its salvation in 
a future heaven. Associationism, on the other hand, 
would explain away all spiritual life and all moral 
responsibility; the higher values and ideals are for it 
wholly derived from sense; and a personal God and per- 
sonal immortality are alike highly improbable if per- 
sonality be what this theory takes it for. Religious 
education would have scant basis here. 

Behaviorism obviously emphasizes conduct, individ- 
ual and social reactions, the development of life. So 
far as it goes, it has points of contact with religion. 
Since it deals with what is capable of common observa- 
tion and control, it seems to be well adapted to serve as 
the psychology of religious education. It is well 
adapted so far as it goes (we repeat), but it does not 
go far. For behaviorism, a personal God and personal 
immortality are even more improbable than for associa- 
tionism ; they are literally impossible. Not only does it 
exclude these vital truths as mere excrescences, but also 
it externalizes and mechanizes the life of religion. True 
religion, as our investigation of religious values has 
shown, has at its heart an inner spiritual experience, a 
mystical relation to God, a devotion of the soul to ideal 
values. Now a behaviorist may have these experiences 
and devotions, but his theory precludes his recognizing 
them. The religious education programs that he pre- 
pares are consistently directed toward the development 
of conduct and social relations. The inner life, prayer, 
the sources of spiritual power and energy, are ignored. 
In their stead is a scheme based on chain-reflexes. The 
moral and religious experiences which behaviorism thus 
excludes are no mere fantastic superstitions, but are 
real experiences to which the universal religious con- 
sciousness bears witness. 

Personalism is, therefore, at once the most truly em- 


RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 269 


pirical and realistic theory of consciousness and also 
the one that recognizes and utilizes to the fullest the 
experiences that are central to religion. As Miss Cal- 
kins puts it, self-psychology is the only “truly psycho- 
logical behaviorism.” A program of religious educa- 
tion that ignores the self, its ideal aims, its identity and 
responsibility, will move only on the surface of moral 
and religious life. When religious education takes the 
self fully into account, it will see, as of late it has not 
always seen, that man is not a machine but a person, 
and that only behavior generated and tested by inner 
ideals can truly be called religious. 

d. The Problem of Moral Values.—As Chapter II has 
already shown, religious values rest on a moral basis. 

Kthics, like psychology, is usually regarded as a spe- 
cial science. It is, however, in a special sense philo- 
sophical, for it is impossible to decide what one ought 
to do without taking all the possibilities that reality 
offers into account. When I say, “I ought to do thus 
and so,” I mean that, having considered all that there 
is aS far as I can, I believe that there is nothing better 
that I could do. The simplest obligation thus has a 
cosmic outlook. Ethics is philosophical. 

In moral theory, as in all fundamental thinking, there 
are differences of opinion. Ignoring minor variations, 
one may say that there are three main views of the na- 
ture of the value for which the good man ought to strive, 
namely, the hedonistic, the formalistic, and the perfec- 
tionistic. 

Hedonism is the view that the only value of life is 
pleasurable consciousness, and that the good life is the 
life which attains a maximum of pleasure. If the pleas- 
ure of the individual is made the standard, we have ego- 
istic hedonism; if the pleasure of society, universal 
hedonism. L[goistic hedonism is plainly hostile to man’s 


270 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


nature as a social and aspiring being; and universal 
hedonism has to appeal to other motives than the love 
of pleasure to arouse and maintain the altruistic spirit. 
Hedonism, therefore, is not generally regarded as a sat- 
isfactory theory of morality. 

Formalism is the theory that received its classic form 
in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. It holds that the 
only moral good is a good will; not the pleasure or any 
other end attained, but solely the intention of the act, 
the principles from which it flows, can decide its moral 
quality. The good will is the rational will, the will that 
rules itself by a universal principle. Moral autonomy 
obeys the categorical imperative of duty. In this ideal 
there is something austere and noble; and also some- 
thing humane, for it judges man, not by his abilities and 
attainments, but by his inner purpose. Yet if formalism 
is to be taken seriously, it asserts that goodness is en- 
tirely independent, not merely of all consequences of 
our action, but even of all regard for consequences. This 
surely does not do justice by our full moral experience. 

Perfectionism holds that moral value consists, not in 
pleasurable feelings only or in rational will only, but in 
the development of personality as a harmonious whole, 
in accordance with the most complete and highest ideal 
of personality that our mind can form. The good life, 
then, is the whole life—the life that aims at the richest 
and fullest development of its capacities. The basis of 
moral obligation is self-respect. Altruism is a duty be- 
cause no self can develop alone, and no self can respect 
itself without respecting others. 

It is all but incredible that any theory of religious 
education should ever be worked out without taking 
cognizance of the philosophy of moral values. It is evi- 
dent that ethical theory profoundly affects one’s con- 
ceptions of the aims of religious education. The hedon- 


RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 271 


ist will seek to develop pleasures, recreations, optimistic 
attitudes, cheerfulness; the formalist will strive to disci- 
pline his will and to inculcate a high-minded and even 
fanatical disregard of consequences; the perfectionist 
will make well-rounded personalities his aim and will 
therefore have a more difficult, but a more rewarding 
task than hedonist or formalist. Perfectionist theory 
alone commands unambiguously the realization of reli- 
gious values as part of the moral task. 

e. The Problem of the Nature of Reality.—When one 
thinks of philosophy one naturally thinks of meta- 
physics—the attempt to give a completely coherent 
description and interpretation of the nature of reality 
as a whole. Metaphysics is the acid test of fundamental 
thinking. He who evades the problem entirely can 
hardly be said to have the intellectual right to pose as an 
interpreter of religion, particularly if his whole position 
includes metaphysical assertions which have not been 
criticized or thought through. Metaphysics demands 
that we define what we mean by reality, by man’s place 
in the cosmos, and by God. Any attitude toward God, 
and so any religious attitude, involves metaphysical 
assertions which need critical examination. 

In a survey of the present kind only a brief account 
of some of the chief problems of metaphysics can be 
given. Perhaps the most crucial problem is that of 
mechanism versus teleology.° Physics explains the 
world in mechanical terms, that is, in terms of necessary 
laws of matter and motion. As a philosophy, mechan- 
ism is the view that explains everything which happens 
as a necessary consequence of past conditions. Teleol- 
ogy, on the contrary, holds that explanation in terms 
of previous conditions is never the last word, but that 





*See E. S. Brightman, An Introduction to Philosophy, Chaps. 
VIII and IX. 


pad RELIGIOUS VALUES 


ultimately all mechanisms and all reality are to be in- 
terpreted as the expression of purpose. The facts of 
biological adaptation, the direction of evolution, the 
function of consciousness, the values revealed in expe- 
rience are among the data that point to a teleological 
explanation. There is, then, evidence both for mechan- 
ism and for teleology. It is one of the tasks of meta- 
physics to think through the mechanistic and the teleo- 
logical aspects of experience. 

It is obvious that if mechanism be the whole truth, 
and if the teleological facts are to be explained wholly 
in mechanistic terms, then, both purpose and freedom 
are mere illusions in the universe. It is little short of 
pathetic when men undertake the responsibilities of the 
religious educator not merely without having thought 
through the problem but without even being aware that 
there is a problem. 

Religious education based on a purely mechanistic 
philosophy, or on a psychology and biology that pre- 
Suppose mechanism as a sufficient account of reality, 
is a contradiction in terms. It is a religious education 
founded on a denial of the possibility of religion. It is 
equally true that religious education founded on a mere 
assertion of purpose and freedom, but leaving known 
mechanisms out of account and not facing the problems, 
is a trivial emotion, a zeal without knowledge. It in- 
jures religion both by its ineffectiveness and also by its 
tendency to inspire contempt for religion in the minds 
of men of science. The imperative need for a meta- 
physics of mechanism and teleology for religious educa- 
tion needs no further proof. 

Metaphysics is, however, complicated business. Like 
all things excellent, it is as difficult as it is rare. Hence, 
there are those who rebel against metaphysics. These 
men (of whom we have spoken in earlier chapters of 


RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 273 


this book) urge that it is impossible to solve the meta- 
physical riddles and declare that we must abandon the 
attempt to interpret the nature of reality. We must, 
they teach, confine our attention to human experience 
and to discovering its possibilities. Nothing can be 
known save what is experienced; all “metaphysical” 
entities, like matter or energy or a personal God, are 
empty speculations that at best are mere symbols for 
facts of experience. This philosophy calls our thought 
away from the invisible God to the visible facts. Pos- 
itivism, whether in its classical formulation by Comte 
or in the more recent garb of the “Chicago School’ of 
pragmatism, substitutes for the God of metaphysics the 
God of social experience. Positivists may retain the 
term “God” for humanity or the social mind, but they 
belong to the school of logomachy founded by Humpty- 
Dumpty, who said, “When I use a word it means just 
what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” For 
Christians, God has always been the heavenly Father, 
the Supreme Person who is both Creator and Redeemer, 
the “determiner of destiny,” the one who hears and an- 
Swers prayer. If this concept is untenable, it would be 
more ingenuous to abandon the use of the term “God,” 
and substitute for it ‘‘social mind” or whatever may be 
the proper equivalent. 

The essential issue here is, as we have shown in earlier 
chapters, no mere quarrel about words. It is the ques- 
tion about whether man lives in a friendly universe and 
can trust its powers to be good, or whether man must 
rely wholly on himself. In this chapter no attempt will 
be made to argue this question; but it may surely be 
said that the religious educator who does not know 
whether he believes in a Rock of Ages or an Uncle Sam 
as the object of his worship is a helpless director of the 
religious life of others. Religious education must be 


274 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


founded on an intelligent attitude toward metaphysics. 
What ought to be depends on what is. 

The human mind, one may safely predict, will not rest 
satisfied with the positivistiec veto against metaphysics. 
Difficult and dangerous as it is to think, it is even more 
difficult and dangerous in the long run not to think. 
The intellectual and religious aspirations of humanity 
will not surrender because their task is hard. It may be 
questioned whether anyone has ever completely avoided 
metaphysics. In proportion as one succeeds in being 
nonmetaphysical, one shuts oneself up into the prison 
of one’s private consciousness and becomes a solipsist. 
No one, however, has ever seriously meant to be a 
solipsist. Positivism rests on a species of self-deception 
and is an artificial construction that men cannot whole- 
heartedly believe when they see its implications. 

It is, then, one of the essential tasks of religious edu- 
cation to make these implications explicit. Religious 
education must become aware of its own presupposi- 
tions; must decide not only whether positivism closes 
the way to God, but also whether the metaphysical way 
leads to God or to an unspiritual universe; and if to a 
God, to what kind of one. Is the pantheistic, the deistic, 
or the theistic conception more tenable? 

If pantheism be true, religious education should aim 
at developing the mystical consciousness of man’s one- 
ness with God. If deism, the aim should be to teach 
God’s utter transcendence and to emphasize miraculous 
interventions in the natural order as the best evidence 
of God’s existence. If theism, it should inculcate in the 
mind the thought of God’s immanence in nature and in 
human persons, and should seek to develop mutual, con- 
scious cooperation of man with God in developing per- 
sonal life. Metaphysical differences breed far-reaching 
differences in theological tenets and in educational 


RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 275 


aims. These differences cannot and should not be 
smoothed over or evaded; they should be thought out. 
Problems remain to plague humanity if they are not 
faced and solved as well as men can solve them. 

f. The Problem of the Nature and Validity of 
Religion.—The branch of philosophy most obviously 
necessary to the theory of religious education is philos- 
ophy of religion. It is only in modern times that this 
branch of philosophy has come to separate development. 
There are numerous reasons for this fact. Some have 
felt that metaphysics already covered the ground, others 
that theology was self-sufficient. Still others resented 
the application of logical methods to the study of 
religion, on the ground that religion is too sacred to be 
pried into by analytic curiosity. In spite of objections, 
it has come to be seen that if religion and logic are to 
dwell in the same mind, they must dwell together; and 
thus there has developed a philosophy of religion. This 
discipline seeks to discover, in the light of what religion 
has been, what religion ought to be. It tries to put 
religion in its proper setting in the real world revealed 
to us by experience and interpreted by science and 
philosophy.?® 

Some of the special problems of philosophy are: the 
nature of religious values, which we have been dis- 
cussing in this volume; the relations of science and 
religion; the interpretation of prayer and mystical 
experience; immortality; the problem of evil. To men- 
tion these topics is to mention what belongs inevitably 
to the content of all religious instruction, either in fore- 
ground or background. Religious education faces the 





~W. K. Wright, A Student’s Philosophy of Religion (New York: 
The Macmillan Company, 1922), and D. M. Edwards, The Philosophy 
of Religion (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1924) are ex- 
cellent surveys of the field. 


276 RELIGIOUS VALUES 


question whether these and other very fundamental 
problems are to be ignored, treated dogmatically and 
superficially, or studied thoroughly and competently. 
If thorough and competent study be the choice, there 
is no way of avoiding the inclusion of philosophy of 
religion in the training of the religious educator. 


7. RELIGIOUS EDUCATION AND RELIGIOUS VALUES 


Herewith we have reached the end of our study of 
religious values. We have sought to interpret the mean- 
ing and worth of religion and particularly of the cen- 
tral religious experience of worship. We have felt that 
our task would have been left unfinished had we not 
also considered the bearing of the results of philosoph- 
ical reflection on the task of religious education. 

Religious education has to do both with technique 
and with content, that is, both with means and with 
ends. This chapter has been concerned solely with the 
problem of content. Kant was right when he said that 
form without content is empty. It is, of course, equally 
true that content without form is dead; and nothing 
that has been said in this chapter can rightly be inter- 
preted as denying or minimizing the value of technique 
in religious education. In the past there was an over- 
emphasis on content without technique; to-day there 
is too much technique without content. There is grave 
danger that religious education may learn how to teach 
but on the way will forget that there is anything to 
teach. A project method that projects nothing is futile. 

Religion is a life-experience which relates man and 
God, transforming the inner life and the social rela- 
tions of him who experiences it fully. Religious values 
do not dwell apart from life in an ivory tower; their 
roots are in the soil of our common life. 

If religion be true to itself, it must express itself in 


RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 277 


affirmations that imply philosophical beliefs about the 
nature of reality. Likewise, if philosophy be true to 
itself, it must include all religious values in its survey 
of experience as a whole. Reasonable philosophy does 
not pretend to be omniscient nor does it fall prey to the 
fallacy that it can prove everything, or can spin the 
universe out of its own interior. Philosophy is only the 
attempt of thought to do the best it can with the uni- 
versal problems of experience. If religious education 
Should try to get along without philosophy, it would be 
in the position of refusing to think about its own foun- 
dations. 

The account of religious values which we have given 
will serve its purpose if it leads the reader to face 
frankly the ideal possibilities of religious experience 
and to think his way through, as well as man may, to 
a coherent interpretation that will do justice, in theory 
and practice, to those values. 





INDEX 


Absolute, 38, 200, 234 
Absolutism, 218 

Adams, G. P., 108 
Adjustment, 63 

Austhetics, 85 

Alexander, S., 140, 154, 160, 207 
Allport, F. H., 265 

Alois, Abbott, 213 
America, 98 

Ames, E. S., 194 

Analysis, 157 

Anarchy, 53 

Angell, J. R., 247 
Anthropomorphism, 157 
Anti-social, 248 
Apocalypse, 191 
Argumentum ad bonum, 71 
Aristotle, 80, 126, 167 
Art, 139 

Artists, 128 

Asceticism, 227 
Associationism, 264, 268 
Astronomy, 157 

Athearn, W. S., 14, 255 
Augustine, 134, 167, 197, 232 
Authority, 261f. 
Autonomy, 55, 66 


Babbitt, 256f. 

Babylonia, 94 

Bacon, F., 34, 188 

Bacon, Leonard, 251 

Barton, G. A., 210 

Baxter, R., 180f. 

Beauty, 61, 98, 186, 211 

Beckwith, C. A., 127 

Behavior, 179, 192ff., 199, 238, 255 

Behaviorism, 43ff., 151, 264ff., 
268 

Belief, 9, 72, 102, 131, 178, 185, 
190, 249 


279 


Bennett, C. A., 209 

Bentham J., 47, 49 

Bergson, H., 206f. 

Berkeley, 167, 232, 243 

Beyond Good and Evil, 196ff. 

Bhakta-kalpadruma, 189 

Bible, 38, 638, 253 

Biology, 22, 51, 62f., 150, 241, 261, 
272 

Biran, Maine de, 167 

Bode, B. H., 267 

Boehme, J., 188, 220, 226, 229, 
231, 235 

Bosanquet, B., 92, 98, 162, 166, 
170, 199, 214 

Bowne, B. P., 49, 75, 77, 167, 208 

Bradley, F. H., 71 

Brightman, EB. S., 21, 123, 153, 
171 

Browning, R., 134, 210 

Buddha, 34, 83 

Buddhism, 71, 82, 90, 100, 121 


Cabot P., 256 

Calkins, M. W., 35f., 45, 167, 269 

Calvin, 198, 241 

Calvinism, 218 

Carneades, 31 

Carpenter, E., 209 

Carr HH? W.-167 

Cather, W., 187 

Causes, 168 

Certainty, 114 

Change, 149, 152, 206 

Chemistry, 33 

Christ, 220 

Christian Science, 71, 100 

Christianity, 67, 72, 82, 125, 138, 
LOU me Liheoo.ea tS 

Church, 61, 83, 223 

Coe, G. A., 66, 177, 223 


280 


Coherence, 21ff., 26, 30f., 140, 241, 
261f. 

Common Will, 26, 28 

Communion, 117, 166, 182, 192ff., 
219, 262 

Community of Love, 221f. 

Comte, A., 107f., 138, 144, 175, 
195 

Concentration, 228 

Conduct, 255 

Conflict, 226 

Confucius, 34 

Conklin, E. G., 247 

Conscience, 54, 148 

Consciousness, 125, 262ff. 

Conservation of Value, 121; see 
Value. 

Conservatism, 84, 191 

Contemplation, 149, 179f., 189ff. 

Contemptus mundi, 197 

Content, 276 

Convention, 40 

Cooperation, 15ff.; with God, 219 

Coulter, J. M., 247 

Creative Intelligence, 148 

Creative Resultant, 207, 224 

Creativity, Chapter IX, 128f., 130 

Creator, 180, 202, 205 

Criterion of Truth, 21ff.; see 
Truth 

Cromwell, O., 198 

Cross, G., 209 

Cult, 179 

Culture, 85, 186 

Cup of Cold Water, 119, 137 

Cunningham, G. W., 267 

Custom, 20, 39 


Death, 91 

Defense-mechanism, 45 

Deification of Man, 138 

Deism, 274 

Deity, 161 

Democracy, 65ff., 107, 145, 199, 
238 


INDEX 


Desire, 42ff., 109, 122, 146f., 148, 
153 

Determinism, 211 

Devotion, 109, 245 

Dewey, J., 17, 62, 129, 140ff., 
162f., 168, 170, 203, 207, 214, 
219, 241 

Dialectic, 187ff. 

Dinge an sich, 112 

Disease, 88 

Disvalue, 81ff. 

Dogma, 116, 127, 129f. 

Dogmatism, 29, 115, 190, 240 

Doubt, 187; about worship, Chap- 
ter VIII, 184 

Drake, D., 113, 250 

Driesch, H., 208 

Drown, E. S., 209 

Dualism, 112 

Durkheim, E., 138, 194 

Duty, 34 et passim in Chapter II 


Economics, 87, 139, 252 

Eddy, Mary Baker, 134 

Education, 44, 53, 139, 141, 251f.; 
see Religious Education 

Edwards, D. M., 275 

Effeminacy, 83 

Hlephant, 241f. 

Emerson, R. W., 175, 177, 188, 
204 

Emotion, 54, 142, 144 

Empirical, 27, 143 

Empiricism, 112 

Epistemology, 118f., 250 

Error, 131f. 

Eternal, 157, 163 

Ethical Culture Society, 61, 138 

BKucken, R., 107, 217 

Everett, W. G., 38, 48, 80 

Evil, 81, 89, 94, 132ff. 

Evolution, 37, 39, 206, 237 

Experience, 9, 103, 112, 139, 150; 
Religious 116, 157f. 


Fads, 255 


INDEX 


Faith, 21, 148, 150, 157, 191 

Father-complex, 194, 202 

Feeling, 192ff., 233 

Fichte, 56, 167 

Finiteness, 96 

Finite God, 68, 236f. 

Fitch, A. P., 108 

Flewelling, R. T., 167, 209 

Follett, M. P., 209, 231 

Force, 55, 65 

Forgiveness, 221 

Formalism, 838, 269f. 

Freedom, 45, 130, 135, 207f., 211, 
221, 236 

Freud, S., 39, 43 

Fruition, 179, 183 

Fundamentalist, 239 


Gandhi, 198 

Geiger, J. R., 106 

Geistesleben, 217 

Genesis, 90 

Geology, 33 

Gestalt, 267 

Givler, R. C., 43 

Gnostics, 211 

God, 24ff., 51ff., B6ff., 63, 95, 97, 
131, 1386, 138, 144, 167, 201, 
212, 234; Hidden, 232ff., 262, 
268; see Finite God. 

Golden Rule, 138, 193 

Good, 133 

Grace, 179 

Greece, 142 

Green, T. H., 48, 167 

Group, 105, 138, 143 

Growth, 148, 163 


Hail, G. S., 105 
Hannan, F. W., 256 
Harnack, A., 86, 233 
Havergal, F. R., 216 
Haydon, A. E., 127, 194 
Hayes, E. C., 150 
Health, 88 

Hedonism, 269f. 


281 


Hegel, 55,.161, 167, 209f., 231 

Herbert G., 180 

Herman, E., 209, 213 

Herrmann, W., 189 

Hinduism, 189 

History, 87, 128; 
131, 254 

Hobbes, T., 55 

Hocking, W. E., 95, 108, 111, 167, 
175, 182, 209 

Hoernlé, R. F. A., 139 

Hoffding, H., 74 

Holmes, EK. S., 209 

Holmes, Mr. Justice, 231 

Holt, HE. B., 43 

Howison, G. H., 167 

Humanism, 10, 240 

Humanistic Religion, 218f. 

Humanity, 98 

Hume, D., 249, 264 

Humpty-Dumpty, 273 

Hypothesis, 146, 149 


Of Religion, 


Idea, 190 

Ideal(s), 48, 70, 97, 124, 127, 
130, 150f., 154, 161, 170f., 216ff., 
219, 247, 255 

Idealism, 87, 130, 145, 152, 204; 
Absolute, 161ff. 

Idee, 210 

Ignorance, 95 

Immanence, 65, 76 

Immediate Experience, 25 

Immortality, 92ff., 95, 105, 120, 
138, 144, 164, 171, 234, 262, 268 

Imperative, 49, 74, 180 150 

Impersonal, 126 

Inclusiveness, 140, 145, 164, 166, 
170 

Individual, 168 

Individualism, 53 

Indoctrination, 262 

Industrial Order, 138 

Inference, 111 

Inferiority-complex, 44 

Instrumentalism, 140ff., 149ff., 166 


282 


Intellectualism, 190, 251 
Intelligence, 76, 86, 169, 207, 241 
Intuitionists, 43 

Irrational, 20 

Isolation or Cooperation, 15ff. 


Jacks, L. P., 206 

James, Epistle of, 90 

James, W., 75, 97, 110, 208ff. 
Japan, 141 

Jesus, 22, 35, 48 838, 198 
Job, 96 

Jones, R. M., 167, 192, 241 
Judaism 82, 100, 167 

Jung, 208 


Kant, 20, 23f.; 30, 35, 37,47, 49; 
BOff., 64, 86, 95 

Kantians, 43 

Keats, 199 

Kempis, Thomas 4, 176 

King, I., 194 

Knowledge, 113 

Knudson, A. C., 19, 56, 66, 108, 
168, 256 

Koffka, K., 267 

Koheleth, 121 


Ladd, G. T., 167 
Lamprecht, S. P., 148 
Law, civil, 41; moral, 37 
Leibniz, 167 

Leighton, J. A., 1438 
Leuba, J. H., 79 

Lewis, 8., 257 

Life, 20, 128, 78; 239f., 250 
Logic, 19ff.; see Truth 
Love, 34, 112, 169, 184, 221f. 
Lovejoy, A. O., 112 

Lotze, H., 20 


McConnell, F. J., 68, 115 
McDougall, W., 208, 267 
Machiavelli, N., 55 
Macnicol, N., 189 

Magic, 109 


INDEX 


Martin, E. D., 194 

Marx, K., 197f. 

Mathematics, 26, 54 

Matter of Fact, 146f. 

Mayo, W. J., 247 

Mechanism, 206, 248, 271ff. 

Mehlis, G., 186 

Meliorism, 166 

Mencius, 228 

Metaphysics, 103ff., 113, 118, 138, 
250, 271 

Middle Ages, 17 

Mill, J. S., 222 

Millikan, R. A., 247 

Miracle, 223 

Modern, 147 

Modernism, 18, 254 

Mohammedanism, 100, 167 

Monotheism, 178 

Moore, A. W., 22 

Moore, G. F., 210 

Moore, J. S., 167 

Moral Values, 168f., 269 

Morality, 196ff.; and Religion, 
56ff. 

Morals, Chapter II. 

More-than-human Values, Chap- 
ter V. 

Morgan, C. L., 207 

Moses, 117 

Miiller-Freienfels, R., 208 

Mullins, E. Y., 246 

Must, 34 

Mysterium tremendum, 59 

Mystery, 115, 134 

Mysticism, 165, 171, 182, 197, 213, 
223 


Napoleon, 98 

Nature, 42, 109, 128, 168 
Neoplatonism, 17, 96 
Neo-realism, 138 
Neutral Entities, 153 
Nietzsche, F., 17, 82, 217 
Nirvana, 180 

Nisus, 161 


INDEX 


Noumenal, 143 
Novelty, 129, 206f. 


Objective Reference, 108ff., 111ff. 

Objectivity, 114, 116; Of Value, 
104, 109, 168 

Obligation, 34ff., 46ff., 148 150 

Ontology, 182, 155, 170 

“Opiate of the People,” 197f. 

Optimism, 166 

Origin, 33 

Osborn, H. F., 247 

Otto, M. C., 150 

Otto, R., 59, 68, 80, 108, 191 

Ought 37, 150 

Overstreet, H. A., 28 


Panobjectivism, 123 

Pantheism, 165, 213f., 218, 274 

Past, 220 

Paul, 198 

Pedagogy, 253 

Peirce, C., 208 

Pell, E. L., 186 

Perfection, 56, 156, 170; Of God, 
64, 67 

Perfectionism, 269ff. 

Perry, R. B., 28f., 123, 154ff., 162, 
168, 219, 246 

Personalism, 10, 113, 125, 181, 
135, 167£., 170, 266ff. 

Personality, 48, 5af., 
171, 199, 2385 

Persons, 168 

Perspective, 212ff., 255 

Philosophy, 97, 104, 242ff., 251; 
Dangers of, 250ff. 

Philosophy of Religion, 275ff. 

Pierce, E., 167, 208 

Pietism, 181 

Plato, 80, 84, 123, 126, 142, 167, 
184 

Plotinus, 134 

Pluralism, 81, 153 

Poetry, 20 

Polynesians, 33 


129, 165, 


283 


Positivism, 10, 104ff., 110, 122, 
185, 137, 166, 195, 239, 274 

Pound, Roscoe, 42 

Power, 219ff. 

Pragmatism, 50, 62ff., 71, 106, 
112f., 124, 183, 188, 152, 204, 
207, 239, 260f., 273 

Pragmatism, Absolute, 77 

Pratt, J. B., 100, 108, 117, 235 

Prayer, 96, 100, 105, 158, 230 

Preparation, 223ff. 

Pretensions, 28 

Primitive Religion, 16 

Pringle-Pattison, A. S., 108, 167 

Probability, 31 

Progress, 64ff., 85, 119, 156, 162, 
166, 170f. 

Progressivism, 115 

Provincialism, 239 

Psychoanalysis, 44, 53, 194, 208 

Psychology, 42, 68, 128, 132, 137, 
253, 263ff. 

Puritanism, 35 

Purpose, 98 


Questionnaire, 177 
Quietism, 218 


Rationalism, 190 

Rationalization, 44, 190 

Realism, 133; Critical, 113; New, 
112f., 152, 161, 166 

Reason, 32, 164, 185f., 187, 246 

Rebellion, 42 

Redeemer, 180, 202 

Reid, L. A., 208 

Reinach, S., 186 

Religion, Definition, 16, 79, 80f., 
56 (Fichte’s) 

Religious Education, 238ff., 242ff., 
257, Chapter X entire. 

Renouvier, C., 167 

Repentance, 94 

Revelation, 127, 
240f. 

Revolt of Youth, 211 


179ff., 190ff., 


284 


Richardson, C. A., 167 

Rickert, H., 22, 125, 168 

Ritschl, A., 182 

Ritual; 72, 83, 232 

Ritualism, 193 

Roman Catholicism, 18, 52, 71 

Rousseau, 241 

EtOVCG, ps5 D0, Uly) QOse LOT EOS, 
Be liaeo ls 234 

Russell, B., 43, 58, 60, 158f., 219 


Sacrifice, 94 

Salvation, 72 

Salvation Army, 198 

Satan, 133 

Saxe, J. G., 241 

Scheler, M., 178 

Schiller, F. C. S., 207 

Science, 72, 85, 87, 104, 106, 127, 
144, 146, 149, 151, 157, 238, 246f. 

Scientific Method, 158 

Schopenhauer, 92 

Scott W. D., 256 

Scripture, 191 

Self, 109, 114 

Self-possession, 228 

Self-psychology, 266f. 

Sellars, R. W., 105, 175 

Sense Experience, 109, 232, 246f., 
259f. 

Service, 137, 177, 219, 238 

Shakespeare, 224 

Sheffer, H. M., 153 

Shyness, 18if. 

Sidgwick, H., 47 

Silence, 228f. 

Simmel, G., 178 

Sin, 94, 133, 221 

Singh, Sadhu Sundar, 196 

Skepticism, 176, 186, 254, 258 

Slavishness, 82 

Slosson, E. E., 209 


Social, Control, 107; Interpreta- 


tion of Religion, 9, 25, 114, 117 
(see Positivism, Humanism, 
Pragmatism); Mind, 202, 273; 


INDEX 


Theory, 248; Values, 120, 122; 
Worship, 222; see Solipsism 

Socialism, 129 

Society, 27, 61, 653ff., 
1512239 

Sociology, 41f., 90, 109 

Socrates, 34, 142 

Solipsism, 111, 195 (social) 

Sollen, 125 

Sophists, 142 

Sorley, W. R., 36, 63, 108, 110, 
167f., 208 

Soul,.222f) 263f; 

Space-Time, 160, 207 

Spaulding, H. G., 154, 159f., 168, 
208 

Spengler, O., 186 

Spinoza, 67, 75 

Squire, J. C., 230 

Status quo, 129 

Strickland, F. L., 168 

Subjective, 193 

Subjectivism, 114, 123, 193 

Subordination, 214f. 

Suffering, 89 

Superhuman, 103, 185, 170 

Supernatural, 119, 135 

Suprapersonal, 29 

Survival-value, 51 

Swenson, D. F., 67 

Symphony, 97 

Synoptic Method, 39, 185 

Synthesis, 210 


73, 138, 


Tabb, J.~B., 200 

Tabu, 40 

Taylor, J., 215 

Technique, 276 

Teleology, 271ff. 

Temple, W., 206 

Theism, 113, 274 

Theocentric, 230 

Theologia Germanica, 182, 203ff., 
216, 8200 

Theology, 76, 103, 107, 131, 185 

Theophobia, 29 


INDEX 


Theory, 214 

Theosophy, 100 

Thomas &4 Kempis, 176 

Thought, 233, 240 

Topsy, 238, 240ff., 246 

Tradition, 142, 145, 174 

Traditional, 147 

Traditionalism, 84, 254 

Traditionalist, 245ff, 

Transcendence, 113 

Transcendent, 25, 103, 110, 112, 
203 

Truth, 61, 7O0ff., 124, 127, 148, 234, 
258 

Tsanoff, R. A., 108, 162 168, 218 

Turner. ots: 00 

Twentieth Century, 174 


Uncle Sam, 194, 274 
Unamuno, M. de, 52 
Unity, 97 
Universals, 126, 168 
Universe, 164 


Vaihinger, H., 106, 194 

Value, 54, 168, 247; Conservation, 
74; Definition, 15, 81; Intrinsic 
and Instrumental, 81; True vs. 
Apparent, 74 


285 


Veracity, 73 
Verification 
113, 246 
Vision of God, 229 


(verifiability), 26, 


Walcott, C. D., 247 

Ward, J., 167 

Watershed of the Book, 173f. 

Watson, J. B., 265 

Watts, I., 11 

Webb, C. C. J., 128 

Welfare, 52 

Wesley, J., 198 

White, A. D., 72 

Wiggam, A. H., 216 

Will, 234 

Wilm, EH. C., 56, 123, 153 

Windelband, W., 107, 122 

Wordsworth, 36, 53 

Worship, Chapters VII-IX; 105, 
117, 1387, 149, 164, 179 (four 
stages) 

Worth, 214f. (personal) 

Wright, W. K., 275 

Wundt W., 207, 224 


Youtz, H. A., 167, 206, 209 


Zarathustra, 175; see Nietzsche 





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